


Nothing Gold Can Stay

by aforallyyyyyyx



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Glee, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Barry Allen Needs a Hug, Barry Allen and Sebastian Smythe are Twins, Character Death, Cheating, Child Barry Allen, Child Death, Child Iris West, Child Julian Albert, Child Murder, Child Sebastian Smythe, Confused Barry, Confused Sebastian, Dark Barry Allen, Earth-14, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eobard is still a murderer, F/M, Henry Allen is different in this universe, I'm Going to Hell, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Infidelity, Nora and Henry need to seriously work out their marriage, Poor Sebastian, Sad Ending, Which one is he really?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 09:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 30
Words: 74,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11552502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aforallyyyyyyx/pseuds/aforallyyyyyyx
Summary: "So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay."from Robert Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" (also source of title).Nora Allen thought her family could recover from their youngest son's passing: the way he was taken from them, she decided, would be one of the harder obstacles. She knew that her family, the perfect Allens, with those adorable twins and their adorable dog, would be hard to glue back together.But seven year old Sebastian tells her that it wasn't Barry who Thawne murdered. And now, Nora is questioning everything she knows: her husband, her living son, and what happened that night in Central City, where the Man in Yellow struck gold.





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Welcome to the alternate universe that I call Earth-14. A few key notes here: a majority of the fic follows Nora, for two reasons. The first is that I found it increasingly hard to write a seven year old boy from an outsider's perspective- his thoughts, for one. Sebastian has lost an identical twin brother (I'm sorry, Barry! But then again, Eobard may have also killed Sebastian, so we don't know!). I felt I was not equipped to handle him while honoring Nora and Henry's grief at the same time, so we follow Nora and Henry, with plenty of interaction between them and their son. 
> 
> The second is that fanfics that revolve around Nora are rare. We don't know a lot about her, since she's a minor character that is only relevant to the plot of the TV show when she needs to be. We know everything that is canon, but we only got a glimpse of what she is really like in "The Runaway Dinosaur".
> 
> Another note is that I have tried to make Nora and Henry as complex as they can be, and in doing so, Henry will probably be different (Earth-14!). Aside from that, enjoy!

* * *

 

 _Nothing Gold Can Stay  
_ by Robert Frost, 1874-1963

"Nature's first green is gold,  
Her hardest hue to hold.  
Her early leaf's a flower;  
But only so an hour.  
Then leaf subsides to leaf.  
 **So Eden sank to grief,**  
 **So dawn goes down to day.**  
 **Nothing gold can stay.** "

* * *

 

Sebastian and his father stood half a yard apart. The light was beginning to come in now, and the small family were bathed in morning sunlight. He regarded his father's hair, grey and glowing: frizzy, for it was exposed.

It was Sebastian's twenty-fifth birthday. And turning twenty-five, Sebastian thought, was a long time coming; his friends, Cisco and Caitlin, had their birthdays in October and January, respectively. But Sebastian was born in March, and he supposed he was lucky to have been born in March rather than his other friends, Blaine and Hunter, both born in July.

The Mountain View Cemetery was mild in the morning. Geese too stupid to fly back home would plod about in the springtime, the grass dewy and damp. It was the perfect place for a stroll, the perfect place for an early morning walk at 6 a.m. Even in spring, it had a sort of chill about it, as if the ghosts kept it cool for visitors. Sebastian supposed it was their sinister side coming out, they liked making an icebox for the living.

The family didn't live close, and they didn't come often. Sebastian remembered going his first time, in first grade, for a tour of the listed historical site just beyond the graveyard. In between then, were more visits than he could count, but they never felt like he went enough. When Sebastian came the first time, he was six: the kids had all ran through the rows, ignoring the historical Native American monument that lay north. Blaine, Hunter, and Sebastian had all tried to find their birthdays on the stones, dating as far back as the 1800s. Cisco and Caitlin followed them in suit, they were not that close, yet. They'd never been close, really, not in their childhoods. But they had known each other.

Sebastian, thinking back, laughed at the thought of five six year old kids searching for some semblance of a connection to the world before them. Searching for a tragedy they could relate to, because they were all children and thought their lives too boring because they had nothing _real_ to complain about. It was sad, and wrong, but they were kids. They didn't know not to go about their lives wishing for sadness.

Losing his train of thought, Sebastian looked over and made slight eye contact with his father, Henry. Henry Allen was a gruff man when he had to be. It was one of the ways Sebastian was his son; Sebastian never cried, not really, and for him to cry, it would take a lot. Sebastian had cried in his childhood, actually, for books, toys, and sad stuff. In fact, he had cried so much that he had cried enough to fill a lifetime. And that was why, standing here in Mountain View, he didn't. He stood, solemn, and if his back was straighter, he could be a military soldier. Stone cold. _Like Hunter_ , Sebastian thought wryly.

Henry seemed to be more or less on the same plane. He carried more rage in his figure, hunched unknowingly, his hands folded in on themselves, like fists. His blue eyes were a swirl storm of sun (relaxed), moon (unreadable), and dark sky (filled with thunder and lightning-fast comebacks to hash out).

Henry wouldn't be the type to argue intelligently, not unless it was Sebastian he was arguing with. If it were anyone else, Henry would just get things done and punch their lights out. Sebastian prided himself in being that one exception with his wit and tongue, learning his father's weaknesses and knowing when he'd gone too far:

 _"_ _Stop calling me Sebastian!"_ He had shouted, well into his teen years. It was a game he had played in his childhood. But Sebastian knew who he was, now.

Henry hadn't taken it lightly. Sebastian had been fifteen and filling out questions to get his learning permit, when he was asked if he was a twin. And Henry had a different answer than Sebastian's simple 'yes.'

But he was back in the cemetery, like all those years ago. Sebastian was searching up and down the rows for a dead person that shared his birthday. Sebastian hadn't found one when he was six, but he had found a grave when he was seven, and eight, and nine, and every year after that. The grave that would never leave him, the grave that he would share one day, if people cared about what he wanted. The grave he would never stop visiting.

The only headstone with Sebastian's birthday on it, March 14th, was where his twin brother, Barry Allen, was buried.


	2. Chapter 2

There. Sebastian had said it.

Nora stared at her seven year old son. Trying to smile. Trying not to show her deep anxiety.

There was surely some latent grief resurfacing there, in Sebastian's developing mind; some confusion unique to twins who lost a co-twin, and Nora was not used to this – to her sons – to her _son_ – being different.

Nora knew, though, that having twins was something even more impressive than the standard miracle of becoming a parent. With twins- especially identicals- she had given birth to genetic celebrities. People who were impressive simply for existing.  
Impressive, and very different.

In which case, this piercingly calm statement from Sebastian – _Mommy, I'm Barry, it was Sebastian that died_ – could be just another example of twin-ness, just another symptom of their uniqueness. But even so, Nora was fighting panic, and the urge to cry. Because he was reminding her of Barry. And because she was worried for Sebastian.

What terrible delusion was haunting his thoughts, to make him say these terrible words? _Mommy, I'm Barry, it was Sebastian that died._  
 _Why do you keep calling me Sebastian?_

"Sweetheart," Nora said to Sebastian, with a fake and deliberate calmness, "It's time for bed soon."

Sebastian gave her that placid green gaze, identical to his brother's. He was missing a milk tooth from the top. Another one was wobbling, on the bottom. This was quite a new thing; until Barry's death, both twins had perfect smiles: they were similarly late in losing their teeth.

Holding the book a little higher, Sebastian said, "But actually the chapter is only three more pages. Did you know that?"

"Is it really?"

"Yes, look it actually ends here, Mommy."

"OK then, we can read three more pages to the end of the chapter. Why don't you read them to me?"

Sebastian nodded, and turned to his book; he began to read aloud.

"I had to wrap myself up in toi-let paper so I didn't get hypo…hy...po…"

Leaning closer, Nora pointed out the word and began to help. "Hypoth-"

"No, Mommy." He laughed, softly. "No. I know it. I can say it!"

"OK."

Sebastian closed his eyes, which was what he did when he really thought hard, then, he opened his eyes again, and read: "So I didn't get hy-po-thermia."

He got it. Quite a difficult word. But Nora was not surprised. There had been a rapid improvement in his reading, just recently. _Which means ...?_

Nora drove the thought away.

Apart from Sebastian's reading, the room was quiet. Nora presumed Henry was downstairs with Joe, in the distant kitchen; perhaps they were opening a bottle of wine. And why not? There had been too many sad days, in the past fourteen months.

"That's how I spent a pretty big chunk of my sum-mer holidays…"

While Sebastian read, Nora hugged his little shoulders, and kissed his soft brown hair. As she did, she felt something small and jagged beneath her, digging into her thigh. Trying not to disturb Sebastian's reading, and trying not to think about what he said, Nora reached under.

It was a small toy: a miniature Thor that Henry and her had bought at Central City Zoo. But they bought it for Barry.

He especially liked action toys and stuffed animals, all the curious reptiles and funny things; Sebastian was- is- keener on train sets, expensive things that would get all over the place. It was one of the things that differentiated them.

"When I got to school today ... every-one was acting all strange."

Nora examined Thor, turning it in her hand. Why was it there, lying on the floor? Nora and Henry had carefully boxed all of Barry's toys in the months after it happened. They couldn't bear to have throw them away; that was too final, too primitive. So they put everything- toys and clothes, everything related exclusively to Barry- in the loft: psychologically buried in the space above them.

"The prob-lem with the Cheese Touch is that you've got it ... un-til you can pass it on to some-one else…"

Barry adored that action figure. Nora remembered the afternoon they bought it; she remembered Barry skipping down West Hasting Street, waving Thor in the air, dreaming of being a superhero of his own, making them all smile. The memory suffused Nora with sadness. She discreetly slipped the action figure in the pocket of her jeans and calmed herself, listening to Sebastian for a few more minutes, until the chapter was finished. He reluctantly closed the book and looked up at her: innocent, expectant.

"OK darling. Definitely time for bed."

"But, Mommy."

"But, Mommy nothing. Come on, 'Bastian."

A pause. It was the first time Nora had used his name since he said what he said. Sebastian looked at her, puzzled, and frowning. Was he going to use those terrible words again?

_Mommy, I'm Barry, it was Sebastian that died. Why do you keep calling me Sebastian?_

Nora's son shook his head, as if she was making a very basic mistake. Then, he said, "OK, we're going to bed."

We?

_We?_

What did he mean by 'we'? The silent, creeping anxiety sidled up behind Nora, but she refused to be worried. She was worried. But she was worried about nothing.

_We?_

"OK. Goodnight, darling."

This would all be gone tomorrow. Definitely. Sebastian just needed to go to sleep and to wake up in the morning, and then the unpleasant confusion will have disappeared, with his dreams.

"It's OK, Mommy. We can put our own 'jamas on, actually."

Nora smiled, and kept her words neutral. If she acknowledged this confusion, it might have made things worse.

"All right then, but we need to be quick. It's really late now, and you've got a school day tomorrow."

Sebastian nodded, sombrely. Looking at Nora.

School.

_School._

Another source of grief.

Nora knew- all-too-painfully, and all-too-guiltily- that he didn't like his school much. Not any more. He used to love it when he had his brother in the same class. The Allen Twins were the Mischief Brothers, then. Every schoolday morning, Nora would strap them in the back of her car, and as she drove up Robson Street to the gates of Central Elementary, she would watch them in the mirror: whispering and signaling to each other, pointing at people through the window, and collapsing in fits of laughter at inside jokes, at twin jokes, at jokes that she never quite understood.

Every time they did this- each and every morning- she felt pride and love and yet, also, sometimes, she felt perplexity, because the twins were so entire unto themselves. Speaking their twin language.

It was hard not to feel a little excluded, a lesser person in either of their lives than the identical and opposite person with whom they spent every minute of every day. Yet, she adored them. She revered them.

And now it was all gone: now, Sebastian went to school alone, and he did it in silence. In the back of Nora's car. Saying nothing. Staring in a trance-like way at a sadder world. He still had friends at the school, but they had not replaced Barry. Nothing will ever come close to replacing Barry.

"You brushed your teeth?"

"Uh huh. Daddy watched."

"OK then, hop into bed. Do you want me to tuck you in?"

"No. Mmm. Yes …"

Sebastian had stopped saying 'we' by then. The silly but disturbing confusion had passed? He climbed into bed and lay his face on the pillow and as he did, he looked very small. Like a toddler again.

Sebastian's eyes were fluttering, and he was clutching the blanket to his chest – and Nora was leaning to check the nightlight.

Just as she had done, almost every evening, for six years.

From the beginning, the twins were horribly scared of total darkness: it terrified them into special screams. After a year or so, Nora and Henry had realized why: it was because, in pitch darkness, they couldn't see each other.

For that reason, Nora and Henry had always been religiously careful to keep some light available to the twins: they always had lamps and nightlights to hand. Even when they got their own rooms, they still wanted light, at night, as if they could see each other through walls: as long as they had enough light.

Of course, Nora wondered if, in time, this phobia would dwindle- now that one twin had gone for good, and cannot ever be seen. But for the moment, it persisted. Like an illness that should have gone away.

_The nightlight was fine._

She set it down on the side table, and was turning to leave when Sebastian snapped his eyes open, and stared at her. Accusingly.

Angrily? No. Not angry. But unsettled.

"What?" Nora said. "What is it? Sweetheart, you have to go to sleep."

"But, Mommy."

"What is it?"

"Jett!"

The dog. Jett. Their little Bichon Frise. Sebastian loved the dog.

"Can Jett stay in here? Please, Mama, please?"

"Of course," Nora was tired. But she left to go and track down the dog.

Sebastian nodded, placated. And then, once the dog, Jett, had circled thrice and his eyes closed, Nora couldn't resist kissing him again.

She did this all the time now: more than she ever did before. She supposed it had something to do with how she had only one twin left to protect.

The freckles on Sebastian's pale skin were like a dusting of cinnamon on milk. He smelled like him- Sebastian. But that meant he smelled like Barry. They always smelled the same. No matter what they did, they always smelled the same.

A third kiss ensured he was safe. Nora whispered a quiet goodnight. Carefully, she made her exit from his bedroom, with its twinkling nightlight; but as she quietly closed the door, yet another thought was troubling her: the dog.

Jett.

_What is it?_ Something about the dog concerned her; it agitated. But she was not sure how. Or why.

Alone on the landing, she thought it over. Concentrating.

The Allens had bought Jett three years ago: an excitable, tiny dog. That was when they could afford a pedigree puppy.

It was Henry's idea: a dog to go with their first proper garden; a dog that matched their proximity to Central City Park. They called him Jett, after he got out of his crate the first day and ran so fast, they had difficulty catching him. Barry and Sebastian, just three, had watched with wonder as Henry tried to catch the dog. In the end, Henry let the puppy run free in the living room, proclaiming, "Guess he's fast."

Henry loved Jett, the twins loved Jett- and Nora loved the way they all interacted.

She also adored, in a rather shallow way, the way they looked, two identically handsome, wonderful little boys, romping around Central City Park- with a happy, cantering, groomed Bichon.

Tourists would actually point and take photos. She was virtually a stage mother.

_Oh, she has those lovely twins. With the beautiful dog. You know._

Leaning against a wall, Nora closed her eyes, to think more clearly. She could hear distant noises from the kitchen downstairs: cutlery rattling on a table, or maybe a bottle-opener being returned to a drawer.

What was it about Jett that felt wrong? There was definitely some troubled thoughts that descended from the concept dog- yet she could not trace it, could not follow it through the brambles of memory and grief.

Downstairs, the front door slammed shut. The noise broke the spell.

"Nora Allen," Nora finally said, opening her eyes, "Get a grip."

She needed to go down and talk to Joe and have a glass of wine and then go to bed, and tomorrow, Sebastian- _Sebastian_ \- would go to school with his blue book bag, wearing his black woolen sweater. The one with Sebastian Allen written on the label inside.

In the kitchen, Nora found Joe sitting at the counter. He smiled, tipsily, the faint tannin staining of red wine on his white teeth.

"Afraid Henry has gone out."

"Yes?"

"Yeah. He had a panic attack about the booze supply. You've only got-" He turned and looked at the wine rack by the fridge- "Six bottles left. So he's gone to the grocery store to stock up."

Nora laughed, politely, and pulled up a stool.

"Yes. Sounds like Henry."

She poured herself half a glass of red from the open bottle on the counter, glancing at the label. Cheap Chilean Merlot. It used to be fancy Barossa Shiraz. She didn't care.

Joe watched Nora, and he said: "He's still drinking a bit, ah, you know- excessively?"

"That's a nice way of putting it, Joe: 'a bit excessively'. He lost his job because he got so drunk he punched his boss. And knocked him out."

Joe nodded. "Sorry. Yes. Can't help talking like that. Comes with the day job."

Joe tilted his head and smiled. "But the boss was a jerk, right?"

"Yes. His boss was totally obnoxious, but it's still not great, is it? Breaking the nose of one of Central City's finest doctors."

"Uh-huh. Sure …" Joe smiled slyly. "Though, y'know, it's not all bad. I mean, at least he can throw a punch- like a man."

He looked Nora's way; she forced half a smile.

Joe was a cop for the Central City Police Department, and made an acceptable, if not slightly below average living for him and his seven year old daughter, Iris. His wife, Francine, had disappeared without a trace around the same time Henry and Nora had moved slightly closer to Central City. But Joe and Iris had a wonderful life in their little house; it might have made Nora slightly jealous of him, but their friendship was evened out by the fact that Nora and Henry were still together. Joe was practically a widower, and one of Nora's sons was dead. As teenagers in high school, the unlikely friends had used to compare notes- _what our lives could have been…._

Now, Nora leaned back, holding her wine glass airily. She tried to be relaxed. "Actually, he's not drinking as much as he used to."

"Good."

"But it's still too late. For his career at Swedish."

Joe nodded sympathetically- and drank. Nora sipped at her wine, and sighed in a what-can-you-do way, and gazed around the big bright Surrey kitchen, at all the granite worktops and shining steel, the black espresso machine with its set of golden capsules: all of it screaming: _this is the kitchen of a well-to-do middle-class couple!_

And all of it a lie.

Nora and Henry _were_ a well-to-do middle-class couple, for a while, after Henry got promoted three times in three years. For a long time, everything was pristinely optimistic: Henry was heading for his own practice and a handsome salary, and Nora was more than happy for him to be the main earner, the provider, because this allowed her to combine her part-time journalism with proper mothering. It allowed her to do the school run, to make cooked but healthy breakfasts, to stand in the kitchen, turning basil into organic pesto when the twins were playing on one of the iPads. For half a decade they were, most of the time, the perfect Allen family.

Then, Barry died, and it was murder. It had been cold-blooded murder, and the criminal who did it was now locked up in Iron Heights for good. But Barry's murder was as if someone had dropped Henry from a height. A hundred thousand pieces of Nora's husband had been scattered around the place. His grief had been psychotic. A raging fire of anguish that could not be quenched, even with a bottle of whisky a night, much as he tried. Every night.

The hospital gave him latitude, and weeks off, but it wasn't enough. He was uncontrollable; he went back to work too soon and got into arguments, then fights. He resigned an hour before he was sacked; ten hours after he punched the boss. And he hasn't worked since.

"Hmm," said Nora. "At least I still have that Chemistry degree floating around."

"Yes!" Joe said brightly. "Somewhere between high school and college and now."

He was teasing. Nora didn't mind. They used to tease each other all the time, before the break-in.

Now, their friendship was more stilted; but they did make an effort. Other friendships ended entirely, after Barry's death: too many people didn't know what to say, so they said nothing. By contrast, Joe kept trying: nurturing the low flame of their friendship.

Nora looked at him, and said, "But Mercury Labs, do you remember? I've shown you photos, every time you've come here, for the last month."

"Ah yes. Mercury Labs! The promised land. Where you wanted to work, but then you met good ol' Henry. But tell me again, I like it."

"It's going to be great, Joe- if I'm approved. Apparently, there are attraction rays with atmospheric breaking, and hyper-tracer mass drives, and satellites-"

"Fantastic. I do love…satellites."

"You do?" Nora was teasing back.

"Oh yes. Especially the…stars. Can you get me my coat?"


	3. Chapter 3

Henry eventually returned from the grocery store, which prolonged Joe's late night visit to the Allen residence.

"Looking back, huh," said Joe. "We were pretty crazy in high school.…"

A voice from upstairs intruded.

"Mommy…?"

It was Sebastian. Awakened. And calling from the landing. This happened quite a lot. Yet, his voice, especially when heard unexpectedly, always gave Nora a brief, repressed, upwelling of grief. Because it sounded like Barry.

She wanted those drowning feelings to stop.

"Mommyyy?"

Henry and Nora shared a resigned glance: both of them mentally calculating the last time this happened. Like two very new parents squabbling over whose turn it is to baby-feed, at three a.m.

"I'll go," Nora said. "It's my turn."

And it was: the last time Sebastian woke up, after one of his nightmares, was just a few days ago, and Henry had loyally traipsed upstairs to do the comforting.

Setting down her wine glass, Nora headed for the first floor. Sebastian was barefoot, at the top of the stairs. He was the image of troubled innocence with his big green eyes, and with a stuffed animal he named King Shark once pressed to his buttoned pyjama-top.

"It did it again, Mommy, the dream."

"Come on, Bash. It's just a bad dream."

Nora picked him up– he was almost too heavy, those days- and carried him back into the bedroom. Sebastian was, it seemed, not too badly flustered; though Nora wished that repetitive nightmare would stop. As Nora tucked him in his bed, again, he was already half-closing his eyes, even as she talked.

"It was all white, Mommy, all around me, I was stuck in a room, all white, all faces staring at me."

"Shhhhh."

"It was white and I was scared and I couldn't move then and then ... then …"

"Shushhh."

Nora stroked his faintly fevered, blemishless forehead. His eyelids flickered toward sleep. But a whimpering from behind her stirred him.

Jett, the dog, had followed them back into the bedroom.

Sebastian searched Nora's face for a favor.

"Can Jett stay again, Mommy? Can he sleep in my room all night?"

Nora didn't normally allow this. In fact, when she had allowed it just earlier, she was expecting Sebastian to have that nightmare again and wake up and then Jett would leave him. But tonight, she just wanted to go back down the stairs, and drink another glass, with Henry and Joe.

"All right, Jett can stay, just this once, again."

"Jett!" Sebastian leaned up from his pillow, and reached a little hand and jiggles the dog's ears. Once more.

Nora stared at her son, meaningfully.

"…Thank you, Mommy."

"Good. Now you have to go back to sleep. School tomorrow."

He hadn't called himself 'we', he hadn't called himself 'Barry'. This was a serious relief. When he settled his head on the cool pillow, Nora walked to the door.

But as she backed away, her eyes fixed on the dog.

He was lying by Sebastian's bed, and his head was meekly tilted, ready for sleep.

And now the sense of dread returned. Because Nora had worked it out: what was troubling her. The dog.

The dog was behaving differently.

From the day they brought Jett home to their ecstatic little boys, the puppy's relationship with the twins was marked- yet it was, also, differentiated. Nora's twins might have been identical, but Jett did not love them identically.

With Sebastian, the first twin, the buoyant twin, the surviving twin, the leader of mischief, the boy sleeping in that bed, right that moment, in that room, Jett is extrovert: jumping up at him when he gets home from school, chasing him playfully down the hall – making him scream in delighted terror.

With Barry, the quieter twin, the more soulful twin, the twin that used to sit and read with Nora for hours, the twin that was murdered last year, Jett was always gentle, as if sensing his more vulnerable personality. He would nuzzle him, and press his paws on his lap: amiable and warm.

And Jett also liked to sleep in Barry's room if he could, even though Nora or Henry usually chased him out; and when he did come in to his room, he would lie by his bed at night, and tilt his head, meekly.

As he was doing now, with Sebastian.

Nora stared at her hands; they had a fine tremor. The anxiety was like pins and needles.

Because Jett was not extrovert with Sebastian any more. He behaved with Sebastian exactly as he used to with Barry.

Gentle. Nuzzling. Soft.

The self-questioning surged. When did the dog's behavior change? Right after Barry's death?

Later?

Nora strived, but she could not remember. The last year had been a blur of grief: so much had altered, she had paid no attention to the dog. So what had happened? Was it possible the dog was, somehow, grieving? Could an animal mourn? Or was it something else, something worse?

She had to investigate: she couldn't let it lie. Quickly, she exited Sebastian's room, leaving him to his reassuring nightlight; then, she paced five yards to the next door. Barry's old room.

Nora and Henry had transformed Barry's room into an office space: trying, unsuccessfully, to erase the memories with work. The walls were lined with books, mostly Nora's. And plenty of them- at least half a shelf- were about twins.

When Nora was pregnant, she read every book she could find on the subject. It was the way she processed things: she read about them. So she read books on the problems of twin prematurity, books on the problems on twin individuation, books that told her how a twin was more closely related, genetically, to his co-twin, to his twin sibling, than he is to his parents, or even his own children.

And she also read something about twins and dogs. She was sure.

Urgently, she searched the shelves. _That one? No. That one? Yes._

Pulling down the book- Nora flipped quickly to the index. Dogs, page 94.

And there it was. This was the paragraph she remembered.

_"Identical twins can sometimes be difficult to physically differentiate, well into their teenage years- even, on occasion, for their parents. Curiously, however, dogs do not have the same difficulty. Such is the canine sense of smell, a dog- a family pet, for instance- can, after a few weeks, permanently differentiate between one twin and another, by scent alone."_

The book rested in Nora's hands; but her eyes were staring into the total blackness of the uncurtained window. Piecing together the evidence.

Sebastian's personality had become quieter, shyer, more reserved, that last year. More like Barry's.

Until then, Nora had ascribed that to grief. After all, everyone had changed that last year.

But what if they have made a terrible mistake? The most terrible mistake imaginable? How would they unravel it? What could they do?

What would it do to all of them? She knew one thing: she could not tell her fractured husband any of it. She could not tell anyone.

There was no point in dropping that bomb. Not until she was sure. But how would she prove this, one way or another?

Dry-mouthed and anxious, Nora walked out onto the landing. She stare at the door. And the words written on it in spangled, cut-out paper letters.

_Sebastian Lives Here._


	4. Chapter 4

Nora once read a survey that explained how moving house was as traumatic as a divorce, or as the death of a parent. Nora felt the opposite: for the two weeks after Sebastian said what he said- she was fiercely pleased that they were moving house.

The decision came about to move to an apartment in the city, so that Nora could be closer to her new job. There was also the problem of mortgage, and paying it- not when Nora was barely beginning her scientific career and Henry was still searching for a new job himself. But she liked the planning, and the apartment hunting- after all, they were a family of three- because it meant that she was overworked and, at least sometimes, distracted.

She _liked_ the thirst-inducing weariness in her arms as she lifted cases from lofty cupboards, and she _liked_ the tang of old dust in her mouth as she emptied and scoured the endless bookshelves.

But the doubts would not be entirely silenced. At least once a day, Nora compared the history of the twins' upbringing with the details of Barry's death. Was it possible, could it be possible, that they misidentified the son they lost?

She didn't know.

And so, she was stalling. For the last two weeks, whenever she had dropped Sebastian off at school, Nora had called him 'darling' and 'sweetheart' and anything-but-his-real-name, because she was scared he would turn and give her his tranced, passive, green-eyed stare and say _I'm Barry. Not Sebastian. Barry is dead. One of us is dead. We're dead. I'm alive. I'm Barry. How could you get that wrong, Mommy? How did you do that? How?_

And after that, Nora got to work, to stop herself thinking.

Today, she was tackling the toughest job. As Sebastian was in school – _Sebastian Grant Allen_ – she was going to sort the loft. Where they kept what was left of Barry. _Bartholomew Henry Allen._

Standing under the hinged wooden trapdoor, Nora positioned the unfeasibly light aluminum stepladder, and paused. Helpless. She thought again.

_Start from the beginning, Nora Allen. Work it out._

Sebastian and Bartholomew.

Nora and Henry gave the twins different-but-related names because they wanted to emphasize their individuality, yet acknowledge their unique twin status: just as all the books and websites advised. Sebastian was named thus by dad, as it was Henry's beloved grandfather's name.

By way of equity, Nora was allowed to choose Barry's name. She made it classical, old fashioned. Bartholomew. She chose the name partly because of her father, and partly because she was fond of historic names. She was fond of the nickname Barry, and partly because it was not like Sebastian at all.

She chose Barry's second name, Henry, after her husband. Henry chose Sebastian's second name, Grant, for one of his uncles. Outgoing, charismatic.

A week after the twins were born- long before Nora and Henry made the ambitious move to the suburbs – they ferried their precious, newborn, identical babies in the back of the car, through the sunshine, home to their humble apartment. And they were so pleased with the result of their name-making efforts, and the twins' birthday- March 14th. Pi Day.

Nora remembered laughing and kissing, exultantly, as they parked- saying the names over and over.

_Sebastian Grant Allen._

_Bartholomew Henry Allen._

As far as Nora and Henry were concerned, they had names that were subtly intertwined, and apposite for twins; they had names that were poetic and pretty and nicely paired, without going anywhere near Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

_So what happened, then?_

It was time to sort the loft.

Climbing the stepladder, Nora shoved hard against the trapdoor- and with a painful creak, it flew open, quite suddenly, slamming against the rafters with a smash. The sound was so loud, so obtrusive, it made Nora hesitate, tingling with nerves: as if there was something up here, asleep – which she might have just woken.

Pulling the flashlight from the back pocket of her jeans, Nora switched it on. And directed it upwards.

The square of blackness stared down at her. A swallowing void. Again, she hesitated. She was trying to deny that frisson of fear. But it was there. She was alone in the house– apart from Jett, who was sleeping in his basket in the kitchen. She could hear the November rain pattering on the slates of the roof above her, up in the blackness. Like many fingernails tapping in irritation.

_Tap tap tap._

Anxieties stirred in Nora's mind. She climbed another rung on the stepladder, thinking about Sebastian and Barry.

_Tap Tap Tap. Sebastian and Barry._

When they brought the twins home from hospital, they realized that, yes, they might have sorted the names satisfactorily, but they still had another dilemma: differing between them in person was much harder.

Because Nora and Henry's twins matched. Superbly. They were amongst the most identical of identicals, they were the kind of brilliant 'idents' that made nurses from other wards cross long corridors, just to ogle their amazing twins.

Some monozygotic twins were not that identical at all. They had different skin tones, different blemishes, very different voices. Others were mirror-image twins, they were identical, but their identicality is that of a reflection in the mirror, left and right are switched: one twin will have hair that swirls clockwise, the other will have hair that swirls anti-clockwise.

But Sebastian and Barry Allen were true idents: they had identical brown hair, swept in the same way without trying, exactly matching hazel-green eyes, precisely the same button-noses, the same sly and playful smiles, the same perfect pink mouths when they yawned, the same creases and giggles and freckles and moles. They were mirror images, without the reverse.

_Tap, tap, tap..._

Slowly and carefully, maybe a little timidly, Nora ascended the last rungs of the ladder and peered into the gloom of the attic, following the beam of her flashlight. Still thinking. Still remembering. Her torch-beam picked out the brown metal frame of a Maclaren twin stroller. It cost them a fortune at the time, but they didn't care. Nora and Henry wanted the twins to sit side by side, staring ahead, even as they wheeled them around. Because they were a team from birth. Babbling their twinspeak, entirely engrossed in each other: just as they had been from conception.

The noise of the rain was more persistent now, like an irritated hiss.

_Hurry up. We're waiting. Hurry up._

Nora did not need encouragement to hurry. She wanted to get the job done. Briskly, she scanned the darkness- and her torch-beam alit on an old, deflated Thomas the Tank Engine daybed. Thomas the Tank Engine leered at Nora, dementedly cheerful. Red and yellow and clownish. That could definitely stay. It had been Sebastian's, after all. Along with the other daybed, which must be up here. The red one they bought for Barry.

Son one, son two.

Red and blue.

At first, they differentiated their babies by painting one of their respective thumbnails, red or blue. Red was for Barry. Blue was for Sebastian.

The nail-varnishing had been a compromise. A nurse at the hospital advised them to have one of the twins tattooed in a discreet place: on a shoulder-blade, perhaps, or at the top of an ankle – just a little indelible mark, so there could be no mistake. But Nora resisted this notion, as it seemed far too drastic, even barbaric: tattooing one of their perfect, innocent, flawless new children? No.

Yet, they couldn't do nothing. So they relied on nail varnish, diligently and carefully applied once a week, for a year. After that- until they were able to distinguish them by their distinctive personalities, and by their own responses to their own names– they relied on the differing clothes they gave the boys; some of the same clothes that were now bagged in that dusty loft.

As with the nail varnish, they had red or maroon clothes for Barry. Blue clothes for Sebastian. They didn't dress them entirely in block colours; a red boy and a blue boy, but they made sure that Sebastian always had dark blue jeans, or blue socks, while the other was blue-less; meanwhile, Barry had a red sweater, or maybe a red T-shirt.

_Hurry now. Hurry up._

Nora wanted to hurry, but it also seemed wrong. How could she be businesslike up there? In that place? The cardboard boxes marked Bfor Barry were everywhere. Accusing, silent, loaded. The boxes that contained his whole life.

Nora wanted to shout his name: Barry. _Barry_. Come back. _Bartholomew Henry Allen._ Nora wanted to shout his name like she did when he died, when she sat in her parent's living room, helpless, and saw his little body, splayed and yet crumpled, still breathing, but dying. When she saw the invading intruder, dressed in a demeaning yellow suit- stab a knife through his tiny chest.

And now, she was gagging on the attic dust. Or maybe it was the memories.

Little Barry running into her arms as they tried to fly kites in Central City Park that one time and he got scared by the rippling noise; little Barry sitting on her lap, earnestly writing his name for the first time, in waxy scented crayon; little Barry dwarfed in Henry's big chair at the office, shyly hiding behind a book as big as himself. _Barry_ , the silent one, the bookish one, the soulful one, the slightly lost and incomplete one- _Barry_ , the twin like Nora. _Barry,_ who once said, when he was sitting with his brother on a bench in a park: _Mama, come and sit between me so you can read to us._

_Come and sit between me?_ Even then, there was some confusion, a blurring of identity. Something slightly unnerving. The complexities were intolerable. But now, beloved Barry was gone. Wasn't he? Or maybe, he was alive at school, even as his stuff was crated and boxed up there? If that was the case, how would Nora possibly untangle this, without destroying her family?

_Work, Nora, work. Sort the loft. Do the job._

Nora just wanted to ignore the grief, get rid of the stuff they didn't need, then move to the city, to downtown, the beautiful glass buildings: where Sebastian- _Sebastian, Sebastian, Sebastian-_ could run wild and free. In Central City Park, like the twins used to. Where they could all soar away, escaping the past, like the Thor figure that they had bought for Barry at the zoo.

One of the boxes was ripped open.

Nora stared, bewildered, and shocked. Barry's biggest box of toys had been sliced open. Brutally. Who would do that? It had to be Henry. But why? And with such careless savagery? Why wouldn't he have told her? Nora and Henry had discussed everything to do with Barry's things. _But now he has been retrieving Barry's toys, without telling me?_

The rain was hissing, once again. And very close, a few feet above Nora's head.

Leaning into the opened box, Nora pulled back a flap to have a look, and as she did, she heard a different noise- a distinctive, metallic rattle. Someone was climbing the stepladder?

Yes.

The noise was unmistakable. Someone was in the house. _How did they get in without my hearing? Who is this climbing into the loft? Why didn't Jett start barking, in the kitchen?_

Nora stood back. Absurdly frightened.

"Hello? Hello? Who is it? Hello?"

"All right, Gorgeous?"

"Henry!"

He smiled in the half-light, which shined from the landing beneath. He looked definitely odd: like a cheap horror movie villain, someone illuminated from below by a ghoulish torch.

"Jesus, Henry, you scared me!"

"Sorry, honey."

"I thought you were out?"

Henry hauled himself up, and stood opposite. He was so tall– six foot one – he had to stoop slightly, or crack his dark handsome head on the rafters. Henry was glancing beyond Nora, at the ripped-open carton of toys. Motes of dust hung in the air, between our their faces, caught by Nora's torchlight. She wanted to shine the torch right in his eyes. Was he frowning? Smiling? Looming angrily? She could not see. He was too tall, there was not enough light. But the mood was awkward. And strained.

He spoke. "What are you doing, Nora?"

Nora turned her torch-beam, so it shined directly on the cardboard box. Crudely knifed open.

"What it looks like?"

"OK."

His silhouette, with the downstairs light behind him, had an uncomfortable shape, as if he was tensed, or angry. Menacing. Why? Nora talked in a hurry.

"I'm sorting all this stuff. Henry, you know we have to do something, don't we? About- About-" Nora swallowed away the grief, and gazed into the shadows of his face. "We have to sort Barry's toys and clothes. I know you don't want to, but we have to decide. Do they come with us, or do we do something else?"

"Get rid?"

"Yes ... Maybe."

"OK. OK. Ah. I don't know."

Silence. And the ceaseless rain.

They were stuck there. Stuck in that place, that groove, that attic. Nora wanted them to move on, but she needed to know the truth about the box.

"Henry?"

"Look, I've got to go." He was backing away, and he headed for the ladder. "Let's talk about it later, I have somewhere to be."

"Henry!"

"There's an open position at the Keystone Hospital, I have to go and see-" His voice was disappearing as he clambered down the ladder. He was leaving- and his exit had a furtive, guilty quality.

"Wait!"

Nora almost tripped over, in her haste to follow him. Slipping down the ladder. He was heading for the stairs.

"Henry, wait."

He turned, checking his wristwatch as he does.

"Yeah?"

"Did you-" Nora didn't want to ask this. But she had to ask this. "Henry. Did you open the box of Barry's toys?"

He paused. Fatally.

"Sure," he replied.

"Why, Henry? Why on earth did you do that?"

"Because Sebastian was bored with his toys."

His face had an expression that was designed to appear relaxed. And Nora got the horrible sensation that he was lying.

_My husband is lying to me._

Nora was lost; yet, she had to say something.

"So, Henry, you went into the loft and got one out? One of Barry's toys? Just like that?"

He stared at Nora, unblinking. From three yards down the landing, with its bare pictureless walls and the big dustless squares, where they had already shifted furniture. Nora's second-favourite bookcase, Henry's precious chest of drawers, a legacy from his grandmother.

"Yes. So? Hm? What's the problem, Nora? Did I cross into enemy territory?" His reassuring face was gone. He was definitely frowning.

It was that dark, foreboding frown, which presages anger. "Sebastian was bored and unhappy. Saying he missed Barry. You were out, Nora. Coffee with Joe. Right? So, I thought, why not get him some of Barry's toys. Mm? That will console him. And deal with his boredom. So that's what I did. OK? Is that OK?"

His sarcasm was heavy. And bitter.

"But-"

"What would you have done? Said no? Told him to shut up and play with his own toys? Told him to forget that his brother existed?"

He turned and crossed the landing – and began to descend the stairs. And now, Nora was one that felt guilty. His explanation made sense. _Yes, that's what I would do, in the same situation. I think._

"Henry-"

"Yes?" He paused, five steps away.

"I'm sorry. Sorry for interrogating you. It was a bit of a shock, that's all."

"Tsch." He looked upwards, and his smile returned. Or at least a trace of it. "Don't worry about it, darling. I'll see you later, OK?"

"OK."

"OK!"

He was laughing now, in a mirthless way, and then, he was saying goodbye, and then he was turning to leave. To find out about that new job. Nora heard him in the kitchen. His white smile lingered in Nora's mind.

The door slammed, downstairs. Henry was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually live in the Vancouver area, where they film The Flash. I have placed the Allens' current house in Surrey, which is a suburb outside of Vancouver. If you're familiar with the area, then the references I've placed already are a little kooky! You'll like them. If you don't, and ever have the chance to visit, do it! It's a little weird whenever I go to this one block in Gastown or something, where Barry ran back in time in Season 1. It has the clock they showed and everything. It's just kooky.


	5. Chapter 5

And now, there was Nora: back in the attic, staring at all the hidden boxes that contain the chattels of their dead son. But at least, she had decided something: storage. That's what they would do with all this stuff.

It was a cowardly way out, neither one thing nor the other, but Nora could not bear to haul Barry's toys to clutter up the new apartment in the city- why would they do that? To indulge the passing strangeness of Sebastian? Yet consigning them to oblivion was cruel and impossible.

One day I will do this, but not yet.

_So storage it was._

Enlivened by this decision, Nora got to work. For three hours, she boxed and taped and unpacked and boxed things up again, then, she grabbed a quick meal of soup and yesterday's bread, and picked up her mobile. She was pleased by her own efficiency. She only had one more duty to do, just _one_ more doubt to erase. Then, all this silliness could be finished.

"Miss Michaels?"

"Hello?"

"Um, hi, it's Nora. Nora Allen?"

"Sorry. Nora. Yes, of course. And call me Lyla, please!"

"OK …" Nora hesitated. Miss Michaels was Sebastian's teacher: a slightly intimidating, keen, diligent woman. A source of solace in the last horrible year. But she had always been "Miss Michaels" to the kids- and now to Sebastian- so it always seems dislocating to use her first name. Nora found it persistently awkward.

But she needed to try. "Lyla."

"Yes."

Her voice was brisk; it was 5 p.m. Sebastian was in an after-school club, but his teacher probably still had work to do.

"Um. Can you spare a minute? It's just that I have a couple of questions, about Sebastian."

"I can spare five, it's no problem. What is it?"

"You know we are moving very soon."

"To downtown? Yes. And you have another school placement?"

"Oh, no, we were going to continue him at Central…"

"Nora. You had a question?"

Her tone was not impatient. But it expressed business. She could be doing something else.

"Uh, yes. Sorry, yes, I did."

Nora stared out of the living-room window, which was half open.

The rain had stopped. The tangy, breezy darkness of an autumn evening encroached. The trees across the street were being robbed of their leaves, one by one. Clutching the phone a little harder, Nora went on, "Lyla, what I wanted to ask was …" she tensed herself, as if she was about to dive into very cold water.

"Have you noticed anything _odd_ about Sebastian recently?"

A moment passed.

"Odd?"

"You know, er, odd. Er …"

This was pitiful. But what else could Nora say? _Oh, hey, Miss Michaels, has Sebastian started claiming he is his dead brother?_

"No, I've seen nothing odd." Miss Michaels' reply was gentle. Dealing with bereaved parents. "Of course, Sebastian still misses his brother, anyone can see that, but in the very challenging circumstances I'd say your son is coping quite well. As well as can be expected."

"Thank you," Nora said. "I have just one more question…"

"OK."

Nora steeled herself, once again. She had to ask about Sebastian's reading. His rapid improvement. That too had been bugging her.

"So, Lyla, what about Sebastian's skill levels, his development. Have you noticed anything different, any recent changes? Changes in his abilities? In class?"

This time there was silence. A long silence.

Lyla murmured. "Well …"

"Yes?"

"It's not dramatic. But there is, I think – I think there's one thing I could mention."

The trees bent and suffered in the wind.

"What is it?"

"Recently I've noticed that Sebastian has got a lot better at reading. In a short space of time. It's a fairly surprising leap. And in science, he's improved vastly, and, well…" Nora could have envisioned Lyla shrugging, awkwardly, at her end of the line. She goes on, "And I suppose you could say that is unexpected? I've been watching out for him at recess, too. He's seemed to have stopped being so, well, sporty. Although sometimes, he runs around by himself."

Nora said, perhaps, what they were both thinking: "His brother used to be good at reading and science, and not so good at sports."

Lyla said, quietly, "Yes, yes, that is possibly true."

"OK. OK. Anything else? Anything else like this?"

Another painful pause, then Lyla said: "Yes, perhaps. Just the last few weeks, I've noticed Sebastian has become much more friendly with Cisco… and Caitlin."

The falling leaves fluttered. Nora repeated the names. "Cisco. And. Caitlin."

"That's right, and they were," Lyla hesitated, then continued, "well, they were Barry's friends, really, as you no doubt know. And Sebastian has rather dropped his own friends."

"Blaine? Hunter?"

"Blaine and Hunter. And it was pretty abrupt. But really, these things happen all the time, he's only seven, your son, fairly young for his year."

"OK."

Nora's throat was numbed. "OK." she repeated. "OK. I see."

"So please don't worry. I wouldn't have mentioned this if you hadn't asked about Sebastian's development."

"No."

"For what it's worth, Nora, my professional guess is that Sebastian is, in some way, compensating for the absence of his brother, almost trying to be his brother, so as to replace him, to moderate the grief. Thus, for instance, he has worked to become a better reader, to fill that gap. I'm not a child psychologist – but, as I understand it, this might not be unusual."

"No. No. Yes."

"And all children grieve in their own way. This is probably just part of the healing process. So, when are you moving house? It's very soon, yes?"

"Yes," Nora said. "This weekend."

The phone felt heavy in her hand.

She gazed at the elegant houses across the street; the parked cars glinting under the streetlights. The twilight was now complete. The sky was clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Nora. :( I decided to have a little Lyla cameo in this. She'll probably appear just this one time, but a little Arrow never hurt anybody, did it? I wanted the rest of the younger adult Team Flash members to be kids, and Lyla isn't a Flash character, so I made her the teacher. All for the sake of not creating an OC, really. Let's pretend in this odd AU that she's the schoolteacher (?) and does not work for A.R.G.U.S...


	6. Chapter 6

Henry Allen parked outside the Keystone Beach, climbed from his SUV – and gazed across the parking lot, and the placid waters, to Central City. The sky was clean of cloud, giving a rare glimpse of northern sun: on a cold November day. Despite the clarity of the air, the city was only just visible, peering through the white clouds and mist on the water.

With a hand shielding the sun, Henry squinted at his potential new workplace. But a second car disturbed his thoughts – squealing to a stop, and parking. An old blue Renault.

His friend, Martin Stein, got out, wearing a chunky Arran jumper, and pants lightly pressed. Henry waved, and briefly looked down at his own jeans. He was going to miss them.

Martin approached.

"As they say, the settler has arrived."

The two men hugged, slapping backs. Henry apologized for his own lateness, for the traffic out of the city – Martin told him not to worry.

This response had a certain irony, in Henry's mind. There was a time when it was Martin who was always late. When Martin was the most unreliable man in Keystone City. Everything was changing.

As one, they both turned, and gazed at the view across the Sound.

Henry murmured. "You know, I'd forgotten just how beautiful it is. Central, I mean."

"So, when was the last time you were here in Keystone?"

"With you and Clarissa, that last summer holiday."

"Really?" Martin smiled, in frank surprise. "Junkie overboard! Junkie overboard!"

It was a catchphrase from that memorable holiday: when they'd come up here as college kids, to Keystone. They'd spent an epic weekend drinking too much, laughing too much, being obnoxious and loud, annoying the locals – and having enormous fun. They'd nearly sunk the rowing boat as they sculled back from the middle of the water that separated the two cities, in the sweet, violet, summer gloaming: the twilight that never went totally black. Seals had emerged: perpendicular, and observing them. "Junkie overboard" was born from one spectacularly intoxicated episode, when Ronnie, another one of their friends, completely mashed on Ecstasy, had tried to embrace one of these seals, then fallen in the cold black water – at maybe 11 p.m.

It was a potentially lethal accident, but they were twenty-one years old and obviously immortal. So Ronnie just swam to the island, fully clothed – and then they'd got drunk, all over again, in that waterside hotel room.

"How long ago was that? Fifteen years?" Martin was chatting away, hands in pockets. The cool sunny wind tousled his hair. "But we had fun, didn't we? All that cider we drank… Have you seen much of Ronald, lately?"

"Not so much."

Henry could have added _for obvious reasons._ But he didn't have to. Martin knew all the facts.

This last year, following Barry's murder, Henry had turned to Martin, above all others: for long consoling phone calls, and the odd one-sided session in the pub, when Martin came down to Central City from Calgary.

And Martin had done his duty, listening to Henry talking about Barry. Talking until the words turned to spit, until the words were a bodily fluid being purged, drooling from his mouth; talking until whisky and sleep blotted everything.

Martin was the only man who had seen Henry really cry about his dead son: one, dark, terrifying evening, when the nightflower of anguish had opened, and bloomed. A taboo had been broken that night, maybe in a good way. A man crying in front of a man, snot running, tears streaming.

And now?

Henry surveyed distant view of Central City once more. It was a long way across the Sound: much further than he remembered.  
Henry started: "So, you mentioned, on the phone, the tides. This afternoon?"

Martin glanced at the receding sea, then back at Henry. "I emailed you a link earlier: official tide tables, with all the details."

"Haven't had a chance to check: on the go since breakfast."

Martin nodded. He was training his gaze, thoughtfully, on the mudflats and the seaweed, drying in the feeble sun. "OK. Well, low-tide today is four p.m. You've got an hour either side of that, max. So we have half an hour; till about three."

Another silence descended between them, momentarily. Henry knew what came next. Gently, his friend enquired: "... how is Sebastian?"

_Of course. This is what you have to ask. How's Sebastian?_ How _is_ Sebastian? What should he say?

He wanted to tell the truth. Maybe six months ago, Sebastian had begun behaving very peculiarly. Something truly strange and disturbing had happened to his surviving son: to his persona.

Things got so bad Henry nearly went to a doctor: and then, at the last moment, Henry had found a remedy. Of sorts.

But Henry was unable to tell anyone, not even Martin. Especially not Martin, because Martin would tell Clarissa, his wife, and Clarissa and Nora were fairly intimate. And Nora could not be allowed to know about this; she must not be told, ever. He simply didn't trust her with this. He hadn't trusted her, for so many months, in so many ways.

So it had to be lies. Even with Martin.

"Sebastian's good. Given the situation."

"OK. And Nora? Is she doing, y'know, all right now? Doing better?"

Another inevitable question.

"Yes. He's fine. We're all fine. Really looking forward to moving." Henry spoke as calmly as he could. "Sebastian wants to see a musical in the city. The night we get there."

"Hah."

"Anyway. We've got time to kill? Shall we have a coffee?"

"Uh-huh. You'll notice a few changes in here," Martin said, as he pushed the creaking door of the pub.

He wasn't wrong. As they stepped inside the Lock, Henry gazed around: surprised.

The old, stained, cosy, herring-fisherman's pub was transformed. The piped pop music was replaced with modern garbage. The muddy carpeted floor had evolved into expensive grey slates.

At the other end of the bar a chalked sign advertised 'squab lobster'; and in between the boxes of leaflets from local theatres, and stacks of pamphlets on sea-eagle spotting, a chubby teenage girl stood behind the beer-pumps, toying sullenly with her nose-ring –and obviously resenting the fact she had to take Martin's order for coffees.

The metamorphosis was impressive, but not exceptional. This was yet another boutique hotel and gastropub, aiming itself at tourists seeking the coastal town and Keystone City experience. It was no longer the scruffy, vinegar-scented local boozer of two decades back.  
Though, as it was mid-November, and a weekday afternoon, locals were the only clients to service, right now.

"Yes, both with milk, thanks, Sara."

Henry glanced across to the corner. Five men, of varying ages and virtually identical crew-neck jumpers, sat at a large round wooden table. The pub was otherwise deserted. The men were silent as they squinted back at Henry over their pints.

Martin lifted a hand and waved at one of the men, a stubbled, stout guy, in his mid-forties.

"Mick. All right?"

Mick turned, and offered his own, very taciturn smile.

"Afternoon, Martin. Afternoon."

The coffees had arrived: proffered by the bored bar-girl. Henry stared at the little cups in Martin's hands.

Henry yearned for a Scotch. You were meant to drink Scotch, in this place, it was expected. Yet he felt awkward downing booze, in the afternoon, with sober Martin Stein.

It was a slightly paradoxical feeling: because Martin Stein hadn't always been sober. There was a time when Martin had been the very opposite of sober. Whereas the rest of the gang from Uni – including Henry – had mildly dabbled in drugs, then got bored and returned to booze, Martin had spiralled from popping pills at parties, into serious addiction: and into darkness and dereliction. For years it seemed that Martin was slated for total failure, or worse – and no could save him, much as they tried, especially Henry.  
But then, abruptly, at the age of 30, Martin had saved himself. With Narcotics Anonymous.

And Martin had gone for sobriety the same way he'd gone for drugs: with total commitment. He did his sixty meetings in sixty days. He completed the twelve-step program, and entrusted himself to a higher power. Then he'd met a nice, affluent young woman in an NA meeting, in Notting Hill – Clarissa. She was an addict, but she was cleaning her scene, like Martin.

They'd promptly fallen in love, and soon after that Martin and Clarissa had married, in a small poignant ceremony, and then they'd exited their Central City suburb, stage east. They'd used the money from selling her house in Holland Park to buy a very nice house, here in Keystone, right on the water's edge, half a mile from the Sound, in the middle of the place they had all loved.

The beautiful Sound, the most beautiful place on earth. It was the channel that ran between Central, Keystone, and Coast City.

Now, Martin was a scientist, and Clarissa, remarkably, was a housewife and businesswoman. She also did the occasional painting.  
Henry stared across the pub. Pensive. After years of feeling sorry for Martin, the truth was, he now envied him. Even as he was happy for Martin and Clarissa, he was jealous of the purity of their lives.

Nothing but air, stone, sky, glass, salt, rock and sea. And heather honey. Henry too wanted this purity, he wanted to rinse away the complexities of the city and dive into cleanness and simplicity.

Fresh air, real bread, raw wind on your face.

The two friends walked to a lonely table: far away from Mick and his shady looking mates.

Martin sat and sipped coffee, and spoke with his own conspirator's smile.

"That was Mick Rory. He does everything, fixes things from Central to Coast. Toasters, boats, and lonely wives. If you need something, he could probably help."

"Yes, I know of him. I think." Henry shrugged. Did he really, now? How much could he recall, from so long ago? In truth, he was still shocked by his own miscalculation of Central City's nearness to Keystone. What else had he remembered wrongly? What else had he forgotten?

More importantly, if his long-term memory was unreliable, how reliable was his judgement? Did he trust himself to live, peacefully, with Nora in Central City, anyway? It could be very difficult: especially if she was opening the boxes, shining lights into the darkness. And what if she was lying to him? Again?

He wanted to think about something else.

"Why haven't you been up since?"

"Sorry?"

Martin persisted: "It's fifteen years since you've been here. Why?"

Henry frowned, and sighed. It was a good question: one he had asked himself. He struggled towards an answer.

"Don't know. Not really. Maybe Keystone and Coast became kind of a symbol. Places I would one day return to. Tiny lost paradise across the Sound. Also, it's about five million miles away, unless you take a boat. Kept meaning to come east, especially since you guys moved here, but of course…" And there it was again, that fateful pause. "By then we had the boys, the twins. And. That changed everything. Suddenly, I didn't need to have fun anymore, and with yowling babies? Toddlers? All a bit daunting. You'll understand, Martin, when you have kids with Clarissa."

" _If_ we have kids." Martin shook his head. Stared down at the stains of milky coffee in his cup. "If." A slightly painful silence ensued. One man mourning his lost child, another man mourning the children he didn't want.

Henry finished the last of his lukewarm coffee. He turned in the uncomfortable wooden pew and glanced out of the window, with its thick, flawed, wind-resistant bullseye-glass. The glass of the window warped the beauty of Central City, making it look ugly. Here was a leering landscape, smeared and improper. He thought of Nora's face, in the semi-dark of the attic, warped by the uncertain light. As she peered into the boxes.

That had to stop.

Martin spoke up: "The tide must be out now, so you've got two hours, max. You sure you don't want me to come with, or give you a lift in the RIB?"

"Nope. I need some time."

The two exited the pub into the sun. The wind had keened and sharpened as the tide had fallen. Henry waved goodbye to Martin _– I'll come round the house tomorrow –_ as Martin's car skidded away.

Henry felt a pang of self-consciousness: as if someone was watching him. Reflexively he glanced around – looking for faces in windows, kids pointing and laughing. The leafless trees and silent houses gazed back. He was the only human visible. And he needed to be on his way.

The path led directly from the Keystone Beach car park, down to some mossed and very weathered stone steps. Henry followed the route. At the bottom of the steps the path curved past a row of wooden boats– their keels lifted high onto the shingle, safe from approaching winter storms. Then the path disappeared completely, into a low maze of seaweed covered rocks, and grey acres ofreeking mud. He had about half an hour, at least.

And his phone was ringing.

Henry plucked his mobile from his jeans pocket. The screen said Nora.

He took the call. The fourth, from his wife, of the day.

"Hello?"

"Are you there yet?"

"The meeting isn't for awhile. I'm in Keystone. Just seen Martin."

"OK."

"Why don't you let me have the interview, first, and I'll call you back as soon as I can."

"OK, yes, sorry. Hah." Her laughter was false. He could tell this even on a cell phone, from six hundred miles away.

"Nora. Are you all right?"

A hesitation. A distinct, definite pause.

"Yes, Henry. I'm a bit nervous. You know? That's all…"

She paused. He frowned. Where was this going? He needed to distract his wife, get her focused on the future. He spoke very carefully.

"The hospital looks lovely, Nora. Well paying, too. We haven't made a mistake. We were right to move to Central, commute's easier…"

"OK. Good. Sorry. I'm just jangling. All this packing!"

Nora's anxiety was still there, lurking. He could tell. Which meant he had to ask; even though he didn't want to know any answers. But he had to ask: "How's Sebastian?"

"He's OK, he's …"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Oh. It's nothing."  
  
"Sorry?"  
  
"It's nothing. Nothing."  
  
"No, it's not, Nora, it's clearly not. What is it?" He gripped his frustration. This was another of his silent wife's conversational stratagems: drop a tiny unsettling hint, then say 'it's nothing'. Forcing him to gouge the information out of her; so he felt guilty and bad – even when he didn't want the information. Like now.  
  
The tactic drove him crazy, these days. Made him feel actually, physically angry.  
  
"Nora. What's up? Tell me?"  
  
"Well, he…" Another long, infuriating pause stopped the dialogue. Henry resisted the temptation to shout. _What is it?!_  
  
At last, Nora coughed it up: "Last night. He had another nightmare."  
  
This was, if anything, a relief to Henry. Only a nightmare? That's all this was about?  
  
"OK. Another bad dream."  
"Yes."  
  
"The same one?"  
  
"Yes." A further wifely silence. "The one with the room; he is stuck in that white room, with the faces staring at him, staring down. It's nearly always the same nightmare. She gets that one, always – why is that?"  
  
"I don't know, Nora, but I know it will stop. And soon. Remember what they said? That's one reason we're moving. New place, new dreams. New beginning. No memories."  
"All right, yes, of course. Let's talk tomorrow?"  
  
"Yes. Love you."  
"Love you."  
  
Henry frowned, at his own words, and ended the call. He slipped his phone in his pocket. The tide was way out, exposing old grey metal chains, slacked in the mud, linked to plastic buoys.  
  
Whitewashed cottages regarded him, indifferently, from the curving wooded shoreline of Keystone, to his right. On the left, Central was domes of glass and steel; he could just see the top of that big building, on Beatty and Robson, owned by the billionaire, the Harrison Wells guy.  
  
As Henry trudged along, hunched, he occasionally lifted his head to look at these same brooding buildings. He walked on.  
  
The silence was piercing. A kingdom of quietness. No boats out fishing, no people walking, no engine noise.  
  
Henry walked, and sweated, and nearly slipped. He wondered at the windless tranquillity of the afternoon, a day so still and clear he could see the last ferry, in the blue distance, crossing from Central to Keystone.  
  
This place was cursed by its own loveliness.  
  
But it was still lovely. And it was also getting dark.  
  
For a moment, Henry considered moving to Keystone.  
  
This place was crime-free; the air was clean and good. It was much safer for kids. Safer for Sebastian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for going so long without an update! :( I hope you'll forgive me. Anyhoo, we get to meet Henry properly. I've always wondered what it would be like to have Martin and Henry be proper friends. Now that the show is on hiatus and it's summer, I'll be a lot less busy. Expect more than what you just got!


	7. Chapter 7

The next few days were all about work. Nora did not have time to stop and breathe and brood or think too much. Because the moving aspect was a brutal nightmare. Only God knew what it was like before Henry “prepared it” for their arrival.

The basic structure of their new apartment was pretty sound: two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living area, an office, and another corner that could be a makeshift library. Nora felt that it had about the same quality as their suburban home, except for the downsize. But it was almost the same price.

The kitchen was nice, though, the appliances- new. Nora directed Ronnie and Henry and Joe and Martin to move their barstools up in the elevator, one by one, and then it was done, save for accessories and food.

The rest of the furniture was slightly more difficult to get into the elevator and into the apartment. Henry found the service elevator to be in working condition, but it was slightly scarier than the residential one. It creaked and rocked as they got the bookcases into it, far too heavy to carry up the stairs. Nora helped with the boxes of books that sat in the truck, while Joe sat outside under an umbrella to make sure nothing went missing.

But now, with everything loaded, Nora was sitting, tired and alone, in the gathering darkness of a solitary lamp in the living “room”. It was an open floor plan, save for the bedrooms and the office. She was watching the large wall in front of her: it was nearly all glass. And the sun was setting.

Henry was snoring in their new bedroom, on the large, dark-sided-bed. Nora’s son was likewise asleep in his room, beside his precious nightlight, at the other end of the apartment. Iris had worn him out with a game of “let’s run around the empty apartment until it’s all filled up” earlier in the day.

The night was beautiful. Nora was looking at a _To_ _Do_ list jotted on the notepad on her lap. It was long- and yet, she was still writing in the semi-dark.

Nora listened to the gentle drum of the rain.

 _What else?_ They had yet to unpack all their crockery and glassware:  they were all in the boxes laboriously and carefully carried up,

Underlining the word _boxes_ , Nora stared around.

And then she stopped, and half smiled.

Despite it all, Nora could still find satisfaction here, a glimpse of future contentment, even. This was a proper  project, and it was enormous, and daunting, yet she liked the way this huge undertaking encompassed her, and commanded her. She knew for sure what she would be doing for a few weeks: turning this beautiful horribly empty apartment into a lovely home. Bringing the dead back to life.

There it was. She had no choice. She just had to get on with it. And she was eager to obey.

There were also some serious pluses. The two bedrooms and the living room were marvelous and had high ceilings, with tall windows that gave them a view of Central City. Even Sebastian’s room had a view of S.T.A.R., and the Sound. It was big for an apartment. Nora and Henry’s bedroom and the living room had views of the rest of the city, lit up at night.

Nora liked the view of Central City, especially at night. It was bright. Not so brightly that it kept her awake; in fact, it helped her sleep, the lights turning on and off, like a very, very slow maternal heartbeat.

And, lastly but most importantly, she adored her job. Even though she expected this wonder, this ability to develop good things, it still amazed her. Every day.

Sometimes she found herself standing, test tubes in hand, lab coat around her shoulders, open-mouthed – and then she comes to, and realize that she’s spent twenty minutes in silence, thinking about the wonders of Mercury Labs and how she would never want to be anywhere else.

She’d repeat these stories. Laughing, lightly but contentedly. Snuggled under the covers. Tender and together. With her husband.

Now, Henry was asleep in their bed, and Nora was keen to join him. But for the last time today, Nora wrote down the things they would need to get done: as if they were an incantation that will protect their little family. The Allens.

Back in the city after so very long.

The pen was almost dropping from Nora’s hand. She could feel herself nodding towards sleep; she had the deep, satisfying tiredness, born of hard physical labour.  
  
But she was woken.

“Mommy, Mommy …??"

A voice called her. Muffled by a door and a distance.

“Mommy!? Mama?!”

 _It must be another nightmare._ Dropping her paper, Nora turned on the lights to walk the dark cold hallway to his room. His door was shut. Was he talking in his sleep?

“Mommy …"

His voice sounded odd. For a moment, Nora was ridiculously paralysed at the door. She didn’t want to go in.

She was scared.

This was absurd, but her heart fluttered with sudden panic. _I can’t go into my own son’s room?_

Something unexpected held her back, as if there was an evil beyond, _a silly, childish, horror-film fear of ghosts is fluxing through me!_ Monsters under the bed, monsters behind the door. Nora’s son might have been in there, smiling at her, in that way. The way he did in the car. Trying to confuse her, to punish her. _You let my brother die. You weren’t there._

But this was nonsense. So no. Nora was a better mother than this.

Suppressing her nerves, Nora twisted at the knob. And stepped over the threshold, and peered into the gloom within.

At once, Nora’s anxiety disappeared: and she was suffused with concern – Sebastian was sitting up in his bed, and he was certainly not smiling: tears were streaming down his face. What was wrong? His nightlight was still on, though its illumination was feeble. What had happened?

“Baby baby – what’s wrong what’s wrong, what is it?”

Nora swooped to his side and embraced him, and he cried, quietly, for several minutes, as she rocked him from side to side, tight in her arms. He was wordless and harrowed.

It must surely have been another nightmare. Slowly, he sobbed, and sobbed. And the rain accompanied his grief, Nora could hear it coming in waves outside, yearning and restless. Inhaling and exhaling.

Gradually, Nora’s little boy whimpered into silence. And Nora held his face between two hands, feeling the warm damp tears on her fingers: “Come on, darling. What is it? Was it another bad dream?”

Nora’s little boy shook his head. He emitted a stifled sob. Then he shook his head again, and lifted a finger, pointing.

A big printed photograph lay on his bed. Nora picked it up- and felt the instant pain it evoked. The quality of the photo was poor- printed out from a computer- but the image was nonetheless stark. It was a cheery photo of Barry and Sebastian on holiday in Florida, maybe a year before the accident; they were at a theme park in Orlando, smiling in their twin Harry Potter costumes from Universal, holding fake wands, slightly squinting in the sun: but smiling happily at Nora, and her cameraphone.

The grief tumbled, like a ceaseless waterfall, stained brown by peat.

“Sebastian, where did you get this?”

 He said nothing. Nora was bewildered. Henry and her long ago decided to keep most photos- _all_ photos, if possible- hidden from their son, to ward off the memories.  _Perhaps he found it in one of the unsorted packing cases?_

Nora gazed at the picture again, trying to ignore her own storms of sadness. But it was so hard. The twins looked desolatingly happy. Brothers in the sun, and each other’s closest relative. In a way, Nora suddenly realized, her surviving son was now orphaned.

Sebastian leaned away from her, in his soft blue pajamas, and he plucked the photo from Nora’s hand and then turned it, and he showed it to Nora in the quarter-light and said:

“Which one is me, Mommy?”

“Darling?”

“Which one is me? Mommy? Which one?”

 _Oh, help. Oh, God._ This was unbearable: because Nora had no answer. The truth was, Nora did not know. She literally could not distinguish between them; in that photo, there were no visual clues. _Maybe the ties are different? A different color? Should I lie? What if I get it wrong?_

Sebastian waited. Nora said nothing: she began to mumble nonsense words, comforting noises, trying to work out what lie to tell. She tried to disguise her squinting at the poorly printed photograph. But the lack of a proper answer was making things worse.

For a tight little second, he stared at her, and then, Sebastian started howling: he fell back onto the bed, flailing his arms, tantruming like a two-year-old. His scream was terrible and rending, his wails were desperate; but Nora could distinctly hear the words:

 _“_ _Mommy? Mommy? Mommy? Who am I?”_


	8. Chapter 8

It took an hour for Nora to calm her son all over again, to pacify him enough so that he finally went to sleep- clutching his blue car blanket so tight, it was as if he was actively trying to strangle it.

But then Nora was unable to sleep. For six dusty hours, next to snoring Henry, she lay there, eyes bright and fierce and upset, and Nora turn over his words in her mind.

_Who am I?_

What must that be like, to not know who you are, _to not know which one of ‘me’ is dead?_

At seven a.m. Nora rose, urgent and desperate, from the tousled bed and she called Martin, who called Ronnie and he yawningly reported that Ronnie agreed to meet her at a cafe before both of them had to head off to work.

Of course, Henry was all questions as he ambled sleepily into the living room; as Nora put the phone down. _Why are you phoning Martin? Where are you going so early? What is going on?_ Yawn.

Words stopped Nora in her mouth even as she tried to reply. She didn’t want to tell him the truth, not yet; not unless she had to, it was too bizarre and frightening- she’d much rather lie. Maybe she should have done more lying, in the past. But she did not have time for guilt: and so she explained that she had to leave early, to visit Ronnie Raymond at S.T.A.R. Labs to get information to help her better understand her study assignment, a terrible lie because that was not how science worked at all. Nora also told Henry that Sebastian had another nightmare, so he needed a lot of comfort while she was gone.

 _A nightmare._ Just a nightmare.

The lie was feeble; yet he seemed to accept it.

Then, she got in the car and drove to a nearby cafe under Martin’s recommendation- Jitters- and Ronnie Raymond arrived scratching the sleep from his eyes, and that was where she called in a favor from him. He knew one of Central City’s best scientists with a minor in child phycology. Dr. Caitlin Snow. And Nora knew this because she attended their wedding in the fall of 2009, with Henry.

Now, Nora demanded his help.

“Can you get me a meeting? Right now?”

“What?” Ronnie Raymond sat across from her in the cafe, his face undoubtedly confused. Nora supposed he wondered _why am I meeting this woman at 7:30 am, and what does she want with my wife?_

“Ronald. Please.” Nora was gazing at the clock, “Please, Ronnie. I need this.”

“Well. Yes… yes, I could try. I’ll call you. But, um,” Ronnie took in a deep breath, cursing his kind nature, “Nora – are you sure you’re OK?”

“Yes?”

“Nora – it’s just – you know-”

“Please.”

Like a kind man – like the friend who has been with her husband all the way – he got the message, and he stopped asking questions, and he left off to do Nora’s bidding. She was too desperate to find out the truth that she didn’t really care if she was rude. And she was.

 And sure enough: Caitlin called her as Nora drove: she had agreed to see her with four hours’ notice.

_Thank you, Ronnie Raymond._

And now, there Nora was in Ronnie’s wife’s office at S.T.A.R. Labs. The woman, Dr Caitlin Snow, was sitting on a leather swivel chair behind her slim metal desk. Her hands were pressed exactly flat together, as if nervous; her twinned fingertips were poised to her chin.

She asked, for the second time. “Do you honestly believe that you might have made a mistake? That evening, in Granville?”

“I don’t know. No. Yes. I don’t know.”

Silence resumed.

“OK, let’s go over the facts again.”

And so Caitlin went over the facts, again. The facts of the matter; the case in hand; the death of Nora’s son; the possible breakdown of Nora’s surviving child.

Nora listened to her recitation, but really she was staring at those swirling clouds outside, beyond the square windows with the steel sills.

Central City. It was such a Satanic city in the winter – cold and futuristic, exultantly forbidding. Why did she come here?

Caitlin had more questions of her own.

“How much of this have you discussed with your husband, Mrs Allen?”

“Not so much.”  
  
"Why not?"

“Just that – I don’t want to make it any worse than it is, I mean, before I know, for sure.”

Again the doubts assailed Nora: _what am I doing here? What is the point?_ Caitlin Snow was easily younger than her, and wears blouses and pencil skirts. Her lab coat was hung on a rack behind the door. She had annoyingly effete gestures, an _oo_ expression on her face. _What does this woman know about my son that I don’t? What can she tell me that I can’t tell myself?_

Now, Caitlin gazed at her, from behind that desk, and she said, “Mrs Allen. Perhaps it’s time to move on from what we know, to what we don’t know, or can’t know.”

“All right.”

“First things first.” Caitlin sat forward. “Following your phone call this morning, I have done some research of my own, and I have consulted with colleagues at the here at S.T.A.R. And I’m afraid there is, as I suspected, no reliable way of differentiating between monozygotic twins, especially in your pretty unique circumstances.”

Nora gazed back at her. “DNA.”

“No. Afraid not. Even if we had” – she winced as she spoke the next words – “a large enough sample from your deceased son, standard DNA tests could almost certainly not discern any difference. Identical twins are just that: identical – genetically identical as well as facially and physically identical. This is actually a problem for police forces; there have been cases where two twins have escaped conviction for crimes because the police are unable to identify which particular twin did the deed, even when they have DNA samples from the crime scene.”

“What about fingerprints, they’re different.”

“Yes, there is sometimes a slight difference there, in fingerprints and footprints, even in identicals, but of course your son, ah ...?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s been several months since the burial so the decomposition…um…”

“Yes.”

“You see the difficulty.”

Caitlin sighed, with unexpected vigour. Then, she stood, and walked to the window and gazed at the street. “It is rather an intractable problem, Mrs Allen. If both sons were alive, there are other ways we could differentiate them, from now on – maybe using patterns of branching blood vessels in the face, facial thermography, but when one is dead, and you want to do it retrospectively ... Then naturally it is pretty much impossible. Anatomical science is not going to help us.”

Caitlin turned, and regarded Nora in her disconcertingly deep leather chair. Nora felt like an infant, her feet barely touching the ground.

“But maybe this is all unnecessary.”

“Sorry?”

“Let’s be positive, Mrs Allen. Let’s look at it a different way, and see what psychology can tell us. We know that loss of a co-twin is especially distressing for the surviving sibling.”

_Sebastian. My poor Sebastian._

“Identical twins who lose their co-twin have significantly higher scores on four of the eight GEI bereavement scales – they suffer more from despair, guilt, rumination and depersonalization.” Caitlin sighed, briefly, but went on: “In the light of this intense grief, especially the depersonalization, the major possibility is that your son Sebastian is simply hallucinating, or delusional. Mercury Labs once did a study on this subject, didn’t you know? Co-twins who lose the other twin. They found that outright psychiatric disorder is elevated in twins whose co-twins have died, compared with twins both living.”

“Sebastian is developing schizophrenia?”

Caitlin was framed by the dark window behind.

“No. Not at all. Consider what Sebastian is going through alone, it’s much different from hallucinating: he himself is a living reminder of the deceased brother. Every time he looks in a mirror, he sees his dead sibling. He is also experiencing, vicariously, your confusion. And your husband’s confusion. Consider, likewise, how he must dread the approach of solitary birthdays, of facing a life of comparative isolation, after being a twin since birth – he is surely experiencing a loneliness none of us can really comprehend.”

Nora was trying not to cry. Caitlin continued, “the bewilderment must be profound. Also, a surviving twin may well feel guilt and contrition after the co-twin’s death: guilt that he was _chosen_ to live. The guilt is further compounded by seeing the grief of his parents, especially if the parents are warring. So many divorces follow this kind of thing, they are sadly universal.” She looks directly at Nora. Clearly expecting a response.

“We don’t argue.” Is all Nora could say. Quite weakly. “I mean – maybe we did, at one point: our marriage went through, you know, a rough patch, but that’s behind us. We don’t argue in front of my son. I don’t think we do. No.”

Caitlin walked to the second window, and stared back at the Nora while pacing: “The guilt and the grieving, and the sudden engulfing loneliness, can combine to unbalance the mind of the surviving twin, in a way. If you look at the literature of bereaved twins, there are many examples of this. When one twin dies, the other will take over their characteristics, becoming more like the twin that died. In another example, a twin in her teens who lost her sister, took on that sister’s name, voluntarily, so she could-”

Caitlin half-turned, and looked at Nora- “stop being herself. That is the phrase she used, she wanted to stop being herself. She wanted to _be_ her dead twin.”

A pause.

Nora had to reply, “So _your_ conclusion is that Sebastian is Sebastian, but that,” Nora was trying to speak as calmly as she could, “but he is pretending to be Barry, or thinks he is Barry, to get over the guilt, and his grief?”

“It’s a very strong probability, in my mind. And it’s as far as I can go without a proper consultation.”

“But what about the dog? What about Jett?”

Caitlin walked back to her chair, and sat down.

“The dog is perplexing. Yes. To a certain extent. And you are of course right: dogs can differentiate by scent between identical twins, even if the best DNA tests cannot. Yet it is also known that bereft and surviving twins often make very close bonds with pets. The pet replaces the dead sibling. My guess, consequently, is that Sebastian and Jett the dog have formed this closer bond, and Jett is behaving in a different way in response to this fonder attachment.”

The rain was now falling on the window, quite heavily. And Nora was at a loss. She had come so close to believing that her darling Barry was back, and yet it seemed Sebastian lived. She imagined it all. The whole thing. And so did Sebastian? Her heartbreak intensified: pointlessly.

“What do I do now, Doctor Snow? How do I deal with my son’s confusion? His grief?”

“Act as normal as possible. Continue as you are now.”

“Should I tell my husband any of this?”

“That is…up to you. It might be better to let it lie – but this, of course, is for you to decide.”

“And then? What’s going to happen then?”

“It’s difficult to say for sure. But my best guess is that this state of disturbance will pass, once Sebastian sees that you still regard him as Sebastian, still _love_ him as Sebastian, don’t _blame_ him for being Sebastian; he will become Sebastian, once more.”

She made this speech like a peroration. With an air of finality. Nora’s consultation was clearly over.

Caitlin escorted Nora to the door, and handed her Nora’s raincoat, like a doorman at a classy hotel; then, she says, much more conversationally:

“Sebastian is enrolled at a new school?”

“Well, yes. Originally we wanted to have him stay at Surrey, but…”

“That’s good. That’s good. School is an important part of normalization: after a few weeks there, he will, I hope, and believe, begin to make new friends, and this present confusion will pass.” Caitlin offered Nora a wan but apparently sincere smile. “I know it must be cruel for you. Almost intolerable.”

She paused for a moment, and her eyes met Nora’s. “How are you doing? You haven’t talked about yourself? You have been through an incredibly traumatic year.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You.”

The question stumped Nora. She gazed at Caitlin’s face, her mild and professional smile.

“I’m doing all right, I think. The move is a distraction, but I like it. I think it can work. I just want all this to be over.”

Caitlin nodded, once more. Pensive.

“Please do stay in touch. Good afternoon, Mrs Allen.”

And that was that. The door to her office shut behind Nora, and she took the elevator to the main door, stepping out into the damp streets of Central City.


	9. Chapter 9

Streetlights made misty haloes in the freezing rain, the cold pavements were almost empty. There was just one woman in black fighting an umbrella in the wind. And it was Nora.

Her car was just around the corner in the parking lot. When she got back to the apartment, she found Henry setting up the flat screen in the living room, tinkering with the electrical wire. He regarded her soaking wet frame, and Nora knew he was keeping silent about where she had been all day.

Sebastian was already in bed, tucked away under the covers. Nora creaked open the door silently to check: as if for some strange reason Henry was lying to her, but no. Just imagining things. As always.

Nora wanted to watch TV all evening, get a takeaway curry delivered, eat it on the sofa with a plastic spoon- because that was all that was unpacked- straight out of the plastic trays, gazing apathetically. Trying not to think about Sebastian in the next room. Henry left her alone to retire eventually, and she watched nature programmes and cookery programmes until her mind was numb with the pointlessness. She felt nothing. No grief, no angst, just quietness. Maybe the storm was past. Maybe this was it. Maybe life can go on.

Nora and Henry’s early breakfast was as plastic as dinner; she was glad to get in the car and head for Mercury Labs at 8:00am.

And as she got into work, her mood elevated.

Surely Caitlin was right: she _was_ a renowned psychiatrist. Who was Nora to argue? Sebastian Allen is Sebastian Allen, thinking otherwise is ridiculous. Nora’s poor child was confused, and guilt-ridden. She wanted to hug him for an hour when she got home. Then begin their lives again. In the big city.

For the first time since they moved, Nora began to feel a serious attachment. Despite the rawness and the squalor, Nora was falling for the very real beauty and busyness of their new home: falling for the glory of the waters flowing south past the shore, the buildings that ranged from old but updated to new and sleek and modern…

The beauty of it was hurtful: like the pain of something beginning to heal.

Nora never wanted to go back to the suburbs. She wanted to stay here.

Central City. Their home.

Lost in her rhapsodies, Nora eventually got off work and drove down through the business district to parked outside Stanley Park, a shoreline walk Henry suggested; and there indeed _was_ Henry, with Sebastian in his dark coat protectively sheltered under his arm, and he was smiling shyly, and he wasn’t smiling at all. He was looking at Nora, oddly, and she knew something was wrong.

“So,” Nora said, disguising her fears, _what can be wrong now?_ “What’s this big surprise?”

“We’re going on a walk in the park!” Henry gave Nora a hard, handsome, unconvincing grin- and lead Nora to the walking and biking path, which twisted on for three miles.

“OK.”

Sebastian had one hand in his pocket, and was holding his father’s large fist with his other hand. Waiting to get on with this walk with Mommy and Daddy and then go home. His dad went on: “Seen plenty of seals on the beach. And the scenery’s beautiful.”

“Erm.” Nora had no idea what to say; she felt this was oddly random. Henry wasn’t much of a walk for pleasure kind of man, but there _was_ some mood there. Something amiss. At least it had stopped raining.

“Let’s go,” says Henry, and suddenly, Nora didn’t know what she was worrying about. Henry’s smile was kind.

He turned and opened his arms to their son, and said:

“OK, Sebastian, do you want to go and see some seals?”

Nora gazed at Henry. He was wondering. Thinking. There was a pause and Nora was starting to believe that Henry had said Sebastian’s name out loud on purpose when Sebastian, so little, then looked at her and said:

“’Magine you had a dog and a cat and another cat called _Hello Bye Bye_ and _Come Here_ and you were in the park with them, shouting.”

“Yes?”

As they walked, Sebastian was softly smiling at her, his white teeth shining. He was laughing properly now. Nora had taken his other hand so he was between them, swinging.

“If you were shouting in the park with them, Mommy, with the cat and the dog and you were shouting _Hello_ and _Bye Bye_ and _Come here_ , they’d be running around everywhere, they wouldn’t know what to do!”

Nora forced a smile. This was the kind of joke- the kind of spontaneous nonsense concept- Sebastian would enjoy with Barry; they would concoct those strange whimsical fantasies and they would get wilder and wilder and then they would both laugh, together, as one. But now, there was no one here to play this game with him.

Nora tried to laugh. It was blatantly phoney. Sebastian stared at her and now he looked sad, with the cold blue waves behind him.

“Had a dream,” he said. “Bad dream again. Granddad was there in the white room.”

“What? Darling?”

Sebastian was distracted, now, staring grief-struck at the waves. Nora leaned closer to her husband, and hissed at him:

“What happened?”

Henry shrugged. And his voice dropped to a whisper. “Another dream. Last night when you were out.”

“The same nightmare?”

“Yes. The faces. Nothing important. It will stop.” He turned, forcibly brightening, and smiling. “OK Sebastian, want to swing with Mommy and Daddy?”

Nora gazed from Henry’s measured and bogus smile to her son’s head, turned away from her, and she considered this recurring dream. Sebastian had been having it for months, on and off. And now his grandfather was in it? Why was Henry dismissing this out of hand? It had to be symbolic. It had to mean something. Yet Nora couldn’t work it out.

Sebastian wasn’t responsive to Henry’s asking if he wanted to swing. His head was turned to the coastline, looking away at the waves. Nora worried that his hood was down, he must have been getting cold. But as soon as they turned around, having not spotted any seals, Sebastian jumped up, and takes the offer. Nora and Henry took his arms and swung him back and forth together, as their son laughed and cheered. Like they were a normal family again.

When they got home, Sebastian was apparently in a brighter mood, glad to be back in the apartment. Jett was waiting for him at the kitchen door: where he often could be found. Henry hadn’t brought him on the walk, either, to which Nora didn’t know why. He was a dog. He had to be walked.

They all went inside, regardless, and the mood was definitely better. There was a purposeful sense of family. A big pot of spaghetti sat on the dining table; mugs were poured and dinner was eaten and decisions were made; Nora and Henry were a couple working on a home.

As the spaghetti was finished, and Henry opened a second bottle of wine, Sebastian happily retreated to his room with a comic book. Yet another reason for Nora to be unhappy, but this time, she was fine.

Henry paused from where he stood so closely, and he laughed. That old, deep, very sexy laugh. Then, he leaned and kissed Nora gently on the lips, and it was a husband’s kiss, a lover’s kiss. And Nora knew the sexual chemistry was still there. Somehow, it survived. Through everything. And she was actually happy, or something close to it.

For the rest of the evening, Henry and Nora did some more unpacking: Henry was content with dealing with the computer stuff, and the office desk.

Nora was hanging up some of her mother’s paintings: they were wonderful and it felt like they acquired a new one every Christmas. But the east wall, the one not covered in windows, seemed too bare.

Positioning a chair, she prepared to hang the second painting. The harlequin. But then, she stopped, frame in hand. She straightened it, looking up. The harlequin looked down. With its white sad face.

From nowhere, the realization pierces her.

The white room, the sad faces, staring down. The constant repetitive nightmare. And now his grandfather?

Nora had worked it out. She had worked out Sebastian’s dream. And everything had changed again; and now, Nora was frightened.

 

 

 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

Henry gazed at his wife. At least they weren’t drinking wine out of plastic cups any more. At least they had gone beyond that, into a world of actual, unpacked wine glasses.

This was something, but not enough. He was sweating around Central City, trying to find work, all kinds of work, any work, all Nora had to do was unpack the rest of the crockery, which seemed to have taken her about a month. Or at least six days. _Yes_ , they’d been working hard on the apartment. Together. And working quite well –getting along better, despite it all. And yes, she had her job at Mercury Labs, but what was that all about, truly? And that extra development she was working on with Ronnie Raymond. He didn’t quite believe it. Ronnie seemed vague and evasive when he’d rung him, yesterday, and asked him: what was his wife doing with him over at S.T.A.R. Labs?

Straining not to drink his wine in one gulp, he listened to her talk about telepathy.

_Telepathy?_

Nora gazed his way. Then she went on.

“Henry, think about it: I mean – the dream. Sebastian is dreaming about Barry. And he is dreaming about Barry in the hospital. Must be, right? So maybe he is imagining himself as Barry, at that horrible moment: when he woke up for a second and saw us all – his family, the nurses, the doctors. His grandfather was there, he was in that room. The white room in hospital.”

“But, Nora, I—“

“But Sebastian has no idea that his brother Barry woke up, that he was conscious for one final moment. No one has _ever_ told him. So-” His wife’s expression was now quite panicked “Henry. How else would he have known about the hospital? How?”

“C’mon, Nora. Calm down.”

“No, seriously, think about it. Please?”

Henry shrugged and said nothing, trying to express, with the disdain in his expression, how much contempt he had for this idea.

“Henry?”

Again he said nothing. Deliberately returning her silences, as a punishment. He felt a surge of anger, that she should try and ruin it all. Again. Just as they were beginning to settle in.

Setting down his glass, he gazed at the mad scribbles of rain on the window.

“Henry, talk to me.”

“Why? When you’re blathering nonsense?”

He was trying to restrain himself. He took a breath. Nope

“What is this crap? Nora?”

“How else did our son learn about Barry, in the hospital?”

“You don’t know that he is dreaming about this.”

“A white room, with sad faces, staring down, and her grandfather is there? It has to be, Henry, what else could it be? The imagery is so so stark, it’s horrible. God.”

Was she on the verge of tears again? Something in Henry wanted her to cry: the way he had nearly cried, when Sebastian said what he said.

His wife had it easy.

Henry resisted the urge to terrify her with the truth. Instead he laid a big hand on his wife’s small white hand, her tiny, pretty, ineffectual hands that couldn’t tie knots to save her life; yet these were the small white hands that he’d loved. Once. Could he ever love her properly again? Love her doubtlessly and purely, untroubled by resentment, or a desire for revenge?

“Nora, maybe your dad told him? You know what he’s like after a couple. Or your mom. My brother. Anyone could have said something about hospitals, and he overheard it, then imagined the rest. Think how horrible it must be. The concept. To a child. Hospital. Rooms. Death. It’d lodge in the memory. That’s why he’s dreaming of it.”

“But I don’t believe anyone did tell him, or said anything he might have overheard. Only my family knew that Barry woke up. And I asked them.”

“You _what_?”

Silence.

“You asked your mom and dad?”

Another pause.

“Jesus Christ. Nora? You’ve been ringing people up, telling them all this, all our private stuff? How is that going to help?”

His wife sipped from her wine, and shook her head, her lips thinned and whitened by suppressed tension.

Henry stared intently at the wine in his glass. Feeling a draining sense of futility: as if he were sitting in a bath and the water was glugging away down the plughole, making him colder, and heavier: transported to a nastier planet.

No. He had to keep halfway positive. For Sebastian.

Tomorrow, he’d try again. Maybe that medical office in Yaletown, he’d take his portfolio in once more. They were close to offering him job. They just needed one more nudge.

“Henry, there are lots of stories of twins having telepathy, some link – you know we used to talk about it and and ... You know, they had the same dreams. Remember when they would start laughing, instantly, the same moment, and we had no idea what it was?”

Henry sat back and rubbed his eyes with a dusty hand. He listened to the house. Sebastian was in his room playing with the old iPad. He could just about hear the distant clicks and whistles of the _Magic School Bus_ Netflix show, dueting with the crinkle of rain on the dining-room window. His son was lost in a computer world, and he couldn’t blame him: it beat reality.

And the reality was: Angus _did_ remember the times when Sebastian and Barry  would laugh simultaneously, for no reason. Of _course_ he remembered: he would stare at them in astonishment when, from nowhere, the twins would both start giggling, in different chairs, at the same time, without apparently communicating. Sometimes this happened when they were in different rooms. He’d walk from one room to another and find them both in identical fits of giggles, with no identifiable cause.

He remembered so much. He remembered one time Barry was reading Roald Dahl’s _Big Friendly_ _Giant_ in his bedroom, and he found that Sebastian was on the same page, downstairs. He remembered watching them once as they walked home from school, Sebastian walking in front, at a funeral pace, doing a kind of slow goose-step, and then he saw Barry walking behind him, thirty yards behind, walking exactly the same way, as if they were both in a kind of trance.

_Why did they do that?_ To freak people out? Or was it because there really was some kind of mental link? Yet he didn’t, and _couldn’t_ believe that. He’d read the science: there was no such thing as twin telepathy. Just the ordinary miracle of identical genes.

He gazed at the smears of the rain. The city beckoned, and appealed. Something in him wanted to be out there in the wind and the cold, scrambling the cruel ridges of the sidewalk, and being under the glass overhangs and staring at people across the street who didn’t have them.

But he was in here, waiting for his wife to talk. She was finishing her wine, the last of the bottle. Would they open another? He always relied on her to police his drinking. And yes he wanted another bottle, already, at five p.m.

“Henry, please. Just _think_ about it. Couldn’t there have been some kind of telepathy? What about those twins in Finland, who died at the same time, in a road crash. What was it-”

“Ten miles apart. On the same night. Yep. And?”

“Isn’t that amazing, doesn’t that prove something?”

“No.”

“But-”

“Nora, even if there was some mental link between them once, which I _don’t_ believe, but even if there _was_ – Barry has been dead over a YEAR. And the dreams only started a few months back.”

The rain seemed to pause. His wife gazed at him.

He went on, “Even if you think twins can send each other dreams, from a distance, I really don’t think twins can contact each other through the ether – when one of them is DEAD. Do you?”

A silence ensued. He barked with laughter.

“Unless you’re saying that Barry is coming back, as a _ghost_? A phantom, floating around, talking to his twin. Where is he now? In the wardrobe, holding his own head?”

It was a _joke_. He was making an attempt at humor.

But with a cringing dizziness, he realized that he’d touched on a truth. Nora  wasn’t laughing; or frowning; she was just staring at him, as the rain returned, as the rain pounded deeper and deeper and slid down the windows of this stupid apartment.

“Oh, fuck this! You believe in ghosts now, Nora? Get-a-fucking-grip. Barry is dead, Sebastian is a confused and unhappy little boy. That’s all. He just needs her parents to be sane.”

“......No. It’s not ghosts, it’s something else.”

“What?”

“I …"

“ _What_?”

“It’s …" She tailed off into silence.

He felt like screaming. _What. The. Hell. Is. It?_ His anger was overtaking him. Barely keeping control, he said, as evenly as possible, “What is it, Nora? What’s the big mystery?”

 “I – I don’t know. The dreams, though, what about the dreams?”

“They’re just fucking DREAMS!” He sank his head into his hands. Overdramatically. Yet sincerely.

For ten seconds neither of them spoke, then Nora stood up, and took the empty wine bottle into the kitchen. Henry watched her as she went; the jeans were hanging off her hips. There was a time when they would have solved this tension.              

 And he still wanted her; he still loved her, even when he resented her.

If his latent anger surfaced: where would it end?

Nora came back from the kitchen. Not holding another wine bottle. His mood sank even further, if that was possible. Could he open one later without her looking at him? He had to stop drinking so much. Sebastian needed his dad relatively sober and sensible. Someone had to be on the watch.

But it was so hard: maintaining the lies. And this place wasn’t helping as he’d hoped. The cold, grey grisliness of November was ghastly enough, and this was just late autumn. What would real winter be like? Maybe the severity and brutality would help: they would have to pull together.

Or maybe it would end them.

 She was hovering in the room, not sitting down.

“Nora, is there something you’re not telling me? You’ve been like this for a while – since that day you went off with Ronnie, maybe. If not before. What’s happened?”

His wife regarded him and said, as ever,

“It’s nothing.”

“Nora!”

“I’m sorry I mentioned it. I have to get Sebastian’s clothes ready, I haven’t even unpacked them, they only arrived this morning and-” he reached for her hand and held it, she went on – “he starts at the new school in a few days.”

He kissed her hand, not knowing what else to do. But Nora pulled away with a silent, apologetic smile, and she turned and exited the dining room, through the unpainted door, scuffing in her three layers of socks on the cold stone floor. Henry watched her go. Sighing urgently.

_Ghosts?_

It was ridiculous. If only the problem was just _ghosts_.

Ghosts would be easy. Because ghosts didn’t exist.

Henry stood, and decided to busy himself with hard manual labour, to purge the sadness, and the anger. The endorphins might help his mood. He wanted to put the bookcases back together, and the bed, which lay on its side. There was just a lone mattress on the floor in the master.

For two hours, he put back together their furniture, in the dim light. The full moon rose over that damn S.T.A.R. Labs building, as the clouds cleared. Jett nosed the door open and loped into the middle of the scattered, furniture pieces and nails and screws, and sat there, tail wagging slowly, and gazing at the puffs of yellow wood-dust spitting from the new IKEA crap.

“All right, boy. All right?”

The dog looked sad. He’d looked sad ever since they’d got here. Henry had expected him to like Central City, indeed relish it- especially with the small-dogs allowed rooftop garden, better than the inviting suburban outdoors and hypocrite owners who swore to walk him every day, but fell short. No?

Yet the dog was often morose, as now: his muzzle posed between his paws.

Henry set down the drill; he had three legs left to attach to this table. He tickled Jett behind the ear.

“What is it, pal? It’s just a big ‘ol city?”

The dog whimpered.

“Do you like the rain?”

Jett yawned, anxiously. And he laid his muzzle between his tiny paws once again. Henry felt a flux of sympathy. He loved this dog. He’d spent endless happy hours walking with Jett. He was the only one to do it. Contrary to what Nora believed, Henry liked walking. He liked the silence.

But this mood-switch was perplexing.

On reflection, Henry realized the dog had been acting very strangely ever since they’d arrived.

Sometimes hiding in corners of the apartment, as if he was scared; at other times refusing to come in.

And he acted differently around Nora. He’d been acting differently around Sebastian and Nora for a long time.

Could the dog have witnessed what really happened that night in Granville? Was Jett there, upstairs, when it happened? Could a dog remember or comprehend a human event like that?

Henry thought everything seemed random. Coincidental. He felt that the clues were all there, and he knew them all, but he couldn’t find the pattern.

Just like that day the twins were born: March 14th. Pi Day.

He stared at the thin crackles of rime.

And now, the grief hit Henry, like a blow to the back of his knees: as it often did. Like a hard football tackle. Making him crumple, and lean to the dusty stacks of planks for support.

Barry, his little Bartholomew. Lying there in hospital with the tubes in his mouth, opening his regretful eyes, once, to say goodbye. As if to say sorry.

_Bear_ , his Barry. Little Barry. His darling son.

He’d loved him too, loved him just as much as Nora. Yet somehow his grief was deemed as lesser?

Somehow the mother’s grief was seen as more important: _she_ was the one allowed to crack up, _she_ was the one given permission to cry, _she_ was the one allowed to agonize for months about her favourite. OK, he’d lost his job, but he’d kept looking for more work through the agony and almost _none_ of it was his fault. This was the enraging thing. She was far more to blame, infinitely more. He wanted to hurt his wife for what happened. Punish her. Hurt her badly.

_And why not?_ His son was dead.

The rain had stopped and the world was grey beyond the windows. Henry stared at the floorboards, despairing.

A low whimper brought him to proper consciousness. Jett was staring at him, head-tilted, and sad, and yet inquisitive. As if he could sense Henry’s absurd and terrible thoughts.

Henry looked to the dog. Calmed himself. And spoke:

“Hey, Jett. Shall we go outside? Find a seal to chase?”

The dog barked softly and whisked his tail; Henry carefully replaced the steel claw hammer on the shelf.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My name is Nora Allen, and I am the worst mother alive. Fourteen months ago, I saw one of my sons killed by something impossible. Then an accident made me the worst mother ever. One day, I’ll find out which of my twin sons actually died, and get justice for my son. I am The Flash!
> 
> ^comic relief? Don't kill me, please. Nora actually isn't the worst mother alive.

It could be any school in Canada. Low-rise and airy, with a biggish playground with gaily painted swings and slides, and lots of parents looking sleepy, careworn and guiltily relieved as they drop off the little ones. It’s just the setting that marks it out: Sound to the left, and big buildings behind, scarred with early December snow. And then, of course, there is the screwed-in sign on the gate.

_All Visitors Must Report To Reception._

Sebastian held his mother’s hand, tightly, as they walked from their sleeker city car between dirty Land Rovers, and approached the glass doors. Other mothers and fathers were greeting each other, personably, and affably, in that enviable, relaxed, chit-chatty, small-talking way that Nora herself had never quite mastered, and will have found even harder here, amongst strangers.

Sebastian was as silent as his mother. Nervous and tense. He was in his new blue-and-black-and-white Northside uniform under his dark windbreaker; when Nora pulled the windbreaker off, at the school doorway, her guilt invaded. _Did I buy the wrong size of clothes? And why didn’t I comb his hair properly?_

They were in such a rush. Nora was forced, in the morning, to speed things up: swiping his hair to one side with the comb– as Sebastian stood between her knees – fidgeting with his toy, and singing a new made-up song to himself.

And now, it was too late: Sebastian’s hair looked messy.

Nora’s protective instinct reached out. She desperately did not want him to be laughed at. He would already be dauntingly lonely, starting at a new school, well into the autumn term, without his brother. And the confusion about his identity was still there: lurking. Sometimes, he called himself ‘we’ not ‘I’. Sometimes, he called himself ‘other Bash’. He did it this morning.

_Other Bash?_

It was bewildering and painful, which is why Nora hadn’t yet addressed it. She merely hoped that Snow was right, and school will somehow resolve it all: the excitement of new friends and new games.

_So here we are._

They loitered at the school door as all the other children go straight to their classes, chattering, laughing, hitting each other with their plastic backpacks. Toy Story, Moshi Monsters, Barbie. A woman with big glasses perched on a small nose, and a very sensible plaid skirt, gave Nora a smile of reassurance, and held open the glazed door.

“Mrs Allen?”

“Yes, er?”

“Checked you on Facebook. Just curious to know who the new parents might be.” She tilted an indulgent expression at Sebastian, as if internet stalking was a perfectly normal thing to do. “And this must be Sebastian! Sebastian?” She ushered them in. “You look just like your photos! I’m Kara Danvers. I’m the secretary.” She looked back at Nora. She was waiting for her to respond. But Nora could not. Because Sebastian was talking.

“I’m not Sebastian.”

The secretary smiled; she must have thought this was a joke. A game. A child hiding behind the sofa, holding up a puppet.

“Sebastian Allen! We’ve seen your photos! You are going to love this school, we teach some lessons in a very special language-”

“I’m NOT Sebastian, I’m Barry!”

“Uh—”

“Bastian’ is dead. I’m Barry.”

“Bastian?…?” The woman trailed off, and looked to Nora, understandably confused. Nora’s son then repeated himself. Loudly. “Barry. I am Barry. Barry!”

The hallway of the school was silent apart from Nora’s son, shouting these lunatic words. Kara Danvers’s smile has faded very quickly. She glanced Nora’s way, with a panicked frown. There were lots of happy French phrases printed on paper tacked to the wall. The school secretary tried one more time.

“Ah..um ... Sebas-”

Sebastian snapped at Kara Danvers as if she were stupid. **_“_** Barry! You have to call me Barry! Barry! Barry! Barry! Barry! Barry! Barry! Barry! BARRY!”

The woman stood her ground, but Sebastian grew quite out of control. He was giving them a full-on toddler’s supermarket tantrum- except that they were in a school, and he was seven, and he was claiming that he was his dead brother.

“Dead, ‘Bastian’s dead. I’M BARRY! I am Barry! He is here! Barry!”

_What do I do?_ Nora tried to make normal conversation, absurdly, “Um, it’s just a thing, a thing – I’ll be back to pick him up at-”

But Nora’s efforts could barely be heard as her son screamed again,  “ _BARRY, BARRY, BARRY, BARRY, BARRY, BARRY,_ Sebastian is _DEAD_ and I _HATE_ him I’m Barry!”

“Please,” Nora said. To Sebastian. Abandoning her pretence. “Please, sweetheart, please?”

“SEBASTIAN IS DEAD. Sebastian is dead, he killed him, he killed him. I am  BAR-THOOOOO-LOOOOO-MEEEWWWW!”

And then as quickly as it started, it blew itself out. Sebastian shook his head, stomped over to the far wall, and sat down in a little chair, under a photo of kids working in a garden, with a cheery French inscription in felt-tip pen.

Nora’s son sniffed, then said, very quietly. “Please call me Barry. Why can’t you call me Barry, Mommy, that’s who I am? Please?” His teary green eyes were lifted. “I’m not going to school, ‘less you call me Barry please. Mommy?”

 Nora was paralysed. His pleading sounded painfully sincere. She had no choice.

The silence prolonged into agony. _Because now I have to explain everything to the school secretary at the worst possible moment, in the most awkward way; and to do that I need Sebastian out of here. I need him in that school._

“OK, OK. Mmm-” Nora’s childish stutter returned. “Ms Danvers. This is Barry. Barry Allen.” Nora was frightened, and mumbling. “I’m actually enrolling Bartholomew Henry Allen.”

A long silence. Kara Danvers looked at Nora, with intense confusion. From behind those big thick glasses.

“Oh…call me Kara…” she said faintly, her eyes on Sebastian, “Pardon me? Erm. Barry? But …” She flushed bright red – then she reached to a desk, behind an open, sliding window, and took up a sheet of paper. Her following words were more of a whisper. “But it says here, quite clearly, that you are enrolling Sebastian Allen? That was the application. Sebastian. Definitely. Sebastian Allen?”

Nora deeply breathed. She went to speak, but her son got there first. As if he had overheard.

“I’m Barry,” said Barry. “Sebastian is _dead,_ then he was _alive,_ but now he is dead again. I am _Barry_.”

Kara Danvers flushed, once more, and said nothing. Nora was feeling too dizzy to respond: teetering on the edge of dark insanity. But with effort, she spoke: “Can we let Barry join his new class and I can explain?”

Another desperate silence. Then, she heard children singing a song down a corridor, raucous and happy.

_“Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to FLY-”_

The incongruity made Nora nauseous.

And Kara Danvers shook her head; then she edged closer to Nora and said, quietly: “Yes ... That seems sensible.”

The school secretary turned to a good-looking young man, in skinny jeans, pressing through the glass doors from the cold outside. “Cis, Cisco, please – do you mind – can you take, ahh, Barry Allen to his new class, Year Two, end of the corridor. William Schuester?”

“ _FLY, blackbird, FLY- ”_

Cisco nodded a languid, amiable _Yes_ and squatted down, next to Barry, like an overkeen waiter taking an order:

“Hey, Barry. D’you want to come with me?”

_“_ _Into the light of the dark black night…blackbird singing in the dead of night…”_

“I’m Barry.” Sebastian was fiercely folding his arms. Scowling. Bottom lip jutting. As stubborn a face as he could manage. “You must call me Barry.”

“Sure. Of course. Barry! You’ll like it, they’re doing music this morning.”

_“_ _FLY, blackbird, FLY…”_

At last: it worked. Slowly, he unfolded his arms and he took his hand – and he followed Cisco toward another glass door. He looked so small, and the door looked so huge and daunting, and devouring.

For one moment, he paused and turned to give Nora a sad, frightened smile- and then Cisco escorted him into the corridor: he was swallowed up by the school. Nora was forced to leave him to his lonely fate; so she turned to Kara Danvers.

“I have to explain.”

Kara nodded, sombrely. “Yes please. In my office. We can be alone there.”

Fifty minutes later, Nora had given Kara Danvers the basic yet appalling details of their story. The murder, the death, the confusion of identity, over fourteen months. She looked so suitably and honestly horrified, and also sympathetic, but Nora could tell that she was very definitely livening up another dull schoolday. This was something she can tell her friends tonight: _you won’t believe who came in today, a mother who doesn’t know the identity of her surviving twin, a mother who wonders if her supposedly dead and buried_ _son has actually been alive for fourteen months._

“That’s a remarkable story,” said Kara Danvers. “I’m so so sorry.”

She took her glasses off and put them on again. “It is amazing that there is, ah, no scientific way... of …"

“Knowing? Of proving?”

“Well, yes.”

“All we know is that – I mean, I think – If he wants to be Barry for now maybe we have to go along with it. For now. Do you mind?”

“Well no, of course. If that’s what you prefer. And that’s fine in terms of enrollment. They are …"

Kara searched for the words. “Well, they were the same age, so – yes – I’ll just have to update the records, but don’t worry about that.”

Nora got up to leave; quite desperate to escape.

“So sorry, Mrs Allen. But I’m sure everything will be all right now, Sebastian – I mean – your son. Barry. He will love it here. Really.”

Nora escaped toward the car park and in the car, she buzzed the windows down and raced back up the coast, the wind was biting cold, a knifing westerly off the the Sound, but she didn’t care. She wanted the freezing cold.

She drove to Central City Centre- here, there were shops and post offices and people on pavement– and a big bright warm café, with very good wifi connection and a very good mobile signal. Nora wanted vodka, but coffee would have to do.

Nora sat on a comfy wooden chair by a big table, and with the fattest mug of cappuccino at her side, she took out her phone.

Her mother.

_I need to call Mum. Urgently._

“Nora, darling, I just _knew_ it was you! Your father was in the garden, we’re having an Indian summer down here.”

“Mum.”

“Is everything all right? Has Sebastian started at his new school?”

“Mum, there’s something you need to hear.”

Nora’s mother knew her enough to realize what her tone of voice implied: her chatter ceased. She waited.

And Nora explained. She explained as she did to Kara Danvers. As maybe Nora was going to have to explain with everyone else.

Nora did it quickly so she didn’t choke up. Nora told her there was a possibility that they got it wrong: the identity of the twin that died. _We don’t know. We are trying to find out._ It was all so absurd, yet so cruelly real. As real as the Jitters cafe that she was sitting in. Nora’s mother, who could be easily as silent as Nora, remained respectfully silent throughout.

“My word,” she said at the end. “My word. My. Well. Goodness. Poor Sebastian. I mean-”

“Mum, please don’t cry.”

“I’m not.”

She was crying. Nora waited. She kept crying.

“It’s just that it brings back so many memories. That awful night. The ambulance.”

Nora waited for her tears to subside, fighting her own emotions into submission. She had to be the strong one here. Why?

“So, Mum, we need to get to the bottom of this, if we can, because – because we need to decide if he is Sebastian or if he is Barry. Then settle on it, I guess. I don’t know. Oh, Jesus.”

“Yes,” my mum says. “Yes.”

A few more stifled maternal sobs pass Nora by. She watched the traffic outside the cafe, heading for Keystone or Surrey. Their conversation drifted into practicalities, and trivialities. But Nora had a serious question for her mother.

“Mum, I want to ask you something.”

She sniffled. “Yes, darling?”

“I need to know, to search out any inconsistencies, find out any clues.”

“What …"

“Is there anything about that night, that weekend, before…before his murder…” There. Nora had said it. “Did you notice anything different about the boys, or different between them? Something you haven’t told me, because it didn’t seem relevant?”

“Different?”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean, Nora?”

“I don’t know. It’s just – maybe I can differentiate them? Even now. Were they behaving differently, was there anything weird, any reason why there was this confusion in my son’s head?”

Nora’s mother was entirely silent. A soft snow was now falling outside, the first of the winter. It was just a few brief flurries. It floated like the lightest confetti in the sharp sad air. Across the street, a small child, walking with her mother, stopped and pointed at the spangled nothingness, her face ignited with joy.

“Mum.”

More silence. This was an unusually prolonged pause, even for Nora’s mother.

“Mum?”

“Well.” Nora’s mother put her thoughtful, lying voice on. “No. We don’t need to dig it all up do we?”

“Yes, we do.”

“Well, I can’t think of anything.”

She was lying. _My own mother is lying!_ Nora knew her too well.

“Mum, there is something. What is it? What? You have to tell me, no more evasions. Tell me.”

The snow was thinning to nothing: just a trace of silvering in the air. The ghost of snow.

“I can’t remember.”

“ _Yes_ , you can.”

“But, darling, I really can’t.”

_Why is she lying about this?_

“Mum. _Please_.”

The next silence was different. Nora could hear her breathing. She could almost hear her thinking. Nora could see her, down there in Granville, in the hallway, with the photos from her dad’s career on the wall, framed and faded, and dusty. Photos of him receiving awards for long-fogotten ads.

“Well, darling, there was something maybe, but it’s nothing. Nothing.”

“No. It’s not nothing. It might not be.”

This was so obviously where Nora got it from: the propensity to silence, the refusal to reveal.

Nora could see why Henry occasionally wanted to strangle her.

“It’s nothing, Nora.”

“Tell me, Mum. Tell me!”

_I actually sound like Henry!_

Nora’s mother took a deep breath, “All right, I ... I just remember the day you arrived, Sebastian was quite upset.”

“Sebastian?”

“Yes, but you didn’t notice, you were so distracted, what with ... everything. And Henry was late of course, late arriving, very late that night, and, I asked Sebastian what it was, what was upsetting him so, and, he said it was something, to do with Daddy. That he had upset him somehow, I think. Something like that, that’s all I remember, it’s surely nothing.”

“No, it might not be. Thanks, Mum. Thanks.”

The dialogue dwindled. They expressed their motherly and daughterly love. Nora’s mother asked if Nora was all right, “I mean,” she added, “all right in yourself?”

 “Yes. I am all right.”

“You’re sure? You sound, darling, a little, you know, like you did. Nora, you really do not want to go back there. Not like you were.”

“Mum, I am managing, I really am, apart from this Barry thing. I actually like the apartment. And I love the city. You must see it.”

“Of course, of course we will.”

To get her off the subject, Nora asked about her brother: and it worked. Her mother laughed softly, and affectionately, and said he was sheep-farming in Australia. Or felling trees in England. She was not entirely sure. It was a family joke that Jamie was so wandering, and prodigal: a family joke they used, to get them through the bad times, and the awkward conversations. Like just then.

Then, Nora’s mother and Nora said goodbye. And Nora sat there in the cafe, and ordered another coffee. Wondering about the conversation she just had. Why was Henry late that night arriving at Granville? Before the murder, the story was: he might be working late. Yet when Nora tried to call him at work, he wasn’t there. It later emerged – he later explained, further – that he’d stopped by Martin’s house, from work, to pick up some of the twins’ things: as they’d recently had a sleepover there.

Childless Martin and Clarissa always liked having children around.

At the time, Nora didn’t question this story. Not remotely. She had too much grieving to do; it all made sense anyway. But now? Martin?

_No. This is stupid. Why am I doubting my husband?_ Apart from the drinking, he’d been there for them all along. Loving, devoted, resourceful, miserable, Henry. _My husband._ And Nora needed to trust him, as she had no one else.

And anyway, there was nothing more Nora could do about Sebastian’s troubles that minute; she had to do some of her own work.

So Nora opened her laptop, and spent two hours sending emails: the accumulated ideas, notions and necessary communications of forty-eight hours.  Working from “home” was fun and fine, for Mercury Labs at least. At least for a day or two. Sipping her cappuccino, looking at the cars driving in and out, Nora considered, once more, her growing infatuation with the city. It was like a teenage crush on an uncaring, hard-to-please boy. The more difficult the city is, the more she wanted to own it, to make it hers.

A few hard hours later, and her work was done; she must go back to school to pick up Sebastian. Nora was going to be late, so she pressed the pedal, but then she skidded over the snow-slicked road, and almost shunted into a stunted oak, mournfully guarding a walker path to her left.

_Slow down, Nora, slow down._ She needed to remember the road was icy pretty much all the way, from Central to the Eastside School.

A lonely snowflake hit Nora’s windscreen, and was exterminated by the wipers. I looked at the coastline. Shaved by winds and deforestation, shouting as its branches are cut off. And now, Nora thought of her son.

Screaming.

Nora had decided what to do about her son. She didn’t want to do this. But she _had_ to. The awfulness that morning clinched it.

Nora arrived at the school. With an effort, she flashed an unconvincing smile at some of the other mothers, and then she turned and looked to the cheery paper sign on the glass door saying _Entrance_ in French and she wondered _where is he, where is my son?_

All of the other children were pouring out: a cataract of giddy energy and French-American chatter and Lego Movie lunchboxes, a mob of small people ran into parental arms and then, finally, the last, slow, reluctant child emerged from the door. A little boy with no friends. Talking to no one.

Nora’s son. Now an only child. With his sad little rucksack. In his sad uniform.               He walked up to her and buried his face in Nora’s stomach.

“Hello you,” Nora said.

She put an arm around him, and guided him to the car.

“Hey. How was the first day at school?”

Nora’s cheeriness was absurd. But what else could she do? _Be gloomy and suicidal? Tell him everything is indeed awful?_

Sebastian strapped himself in the child seat, and gazed out the window at the grey tidal waters of the Sound, and the lights of Central City across the highway bridge: with its port and its railway station, and its symbols of escape and civilization and the mainland, now getting closer. The winter darkness was already shrouding.

“Sweetie. How did it go at school?”

 He was looking out of the window, still. Nora persisted.

“Bash?”

“Nothing.”

“Sorry?”

“No one.”

“Oh, OK.” What does this mean?

 Nothing and no one?

Nora turned the radio on and sung along to a happy tune as she had a brief exultant urge to drive the car straight into the Sound.

But Nora had a plan and she was going to stick to it. They just need to get home.

_Then I will do what I am so afraid of doing._

That wretched and terrible thing.


	12. Chapter 12

Sebastian sat, slightly red-eyed, yet calm, in the living room of their apartment at Queen Square, looking first at Nora, then at the view of the city out the windows. His caramel and brown hair was sweetly and slightly swept to once side. He looked so perfect and small – his retroussé profile was framed by the window. Like whichever twin lived on Granville, while the other one died below. Nora loved him so much, her little boy. She loved him because he was Sebastian and she loved him because he reminded her of Barry.

And, of course, part of her wanted her little Barry back. Part of her _sung_ at this idea. She had missed Barry intensely: the way they would sit and read together for entire afternoons, the way they would sometimes just sit, quiet but happy; Sebastian was always bouncing around, much less patient. The idea that Barry could have returned, from the dead, was a kind of miracle. Terrifying, but a miracle. Maybe all miracles are frightening? _But if I get Barry back, if this really is Barry here, now – then Sebastian_ _dies_.

_What am I thinking?_ This was Sebastian, as Nora was about to prove. In the cruellest of ways. If she could find the ruthlessness to see it through.

Sebastian asked, in the biting silence, “Why’s it called Central, Mummy?”

This was good. A normal conversation.

“I think it’s because it’s right in the middle of Keystone City, Coast City, Surrey, Eastside, Yaletown…” She left Granville unspoken. “I think there used to be a big business capital here. And it grew, and so the other cities did, too.”

“When, Mommy? What’s business capital?”

“A business capital is a place with a lot of companies making money in a certain place. A lot of companies made a lot of money a long time ago.”

“Before we were a baby?”

Nora ignored the troubled syntax, and nodded. “Yep. Long time before then.”

“Now there’s no businesses there?”

“There still are.”

Henry was absent, doing an overnight thing in Yaletown. They were alone in their apartment and that was just fine.

Sebastian patted and stroked Jett, then he went to his room to read, and Nora prepared supper in the shadows of the kitchen. There was a calmness. Before the storm?

Nora girded herself for what she was about to do.

Nora should have, perhaps, have done this three weeks ago: she was going to do a test on Sebastian, one he could not fake or fail. The idea half-occurred to her that morning, as she contemplated Barry, screaming at the school; it only really formed this afternoon.

Nora’s experiment would rely on her son’s phobia: her hatred of darkness. Whenever this phobia was triggered, both twins screamed: but they screamed in a unique way, they screamed differently. Sebastian would yell, and pant, and shout: making a tremulous version of horrified words. Barry would go into a simple shriek: very high-pitched. Ice-shattering.

Nora had only heard this scream a few times. It was different to any other vocalization. Which was probably why Nora only clearly thought of it today. And one of those occasions was when the Allens had a power cut, in Surrey. Two years ago, plunging the twins into total darkness: the blackness they always feared.

When this happened, they both had that phobic, instant reaction. But Sebastian panted and yelled; Barry emitted that piercing shriek.

And now, Nora was going to trigger this phobia deliberately. By jailing him in sudden dark. His reaction would be instinctive, and reflexive, he wouldn’t be able to fake or fabricate it; so it will tell her the truth.

Nora’s plan was cruel, it made her faint with guilt, but she saw no alternative. Allowing this confusion to go on was crueler.

_I have to do it now or I will lose myself in doubt, and self-hatred._

Sebastian gazed up at Nora as she entered his bedroom. He looked very sad. He had made this bare room a little more homely, with Barry’s books on a shelf and his pictures of dinosaurs on the wall. But it was still a spare, lonely room, bereft of his twin. His radio was playing Kids Pop. One Direction. There was a wicker basket full of toys. But he hadn't moved them much. Only Jett was huddled into his bed.

Both twins loved Jett. Maybe Barry loved Jett a little bit more?

His sad eyes were unbearable.

“Darling,” Nora said, tentatively. “Tell me what happened today at school.”

Silence.

Nora tried again: “Did you have a good day? Your first day? Tell me about your teachers.”

More silence, more One Direction. He closed his eyes and Nora waited and waited and she could sense he was going to tell her; then, yes, he slowly leaned in to her, and he said, in a very tiny voice,

“No one wanted to play with me, Mommy.”

Nora’s heart broke open.

“Oh. I see.”

“I kept asking people, but no one would play with me.”

The pain inside Nora was burning, she wanted to cuddle her son, protect him.

“OK, sweetie, it’s just your first day, darling, that happens.”  
  
“So I played with Sebastian.”

Nora stroke his hair, gently, as her heart raced.

“Sebastian?”

“He played with me, like we always play.”

“OK.”

_What do I do? Get angry? Cry? Shout? Explain that Barry is dead and he_ _is Sebastian?_ Maybe Nora didn't even know herself, which one was dead.

“But then, when I was playing with Bash…"

“Yes?”

“Everyone laughed at me, Mommy. It was ... It made me cry, they were all laughing.”

“Because you were really alone?”

“No! Sebastian was there! _He was there!_ He’s _here!_ He’s _here!”_

“Darling, he’s not here, he’s-”

“He’s what?”

“Sebastian, your brother- he- he-”

“Just say it, Mommy, just say it, I know he’s dead, you told me he’s _dead_.”

“Sweetheart-”

“You keep saying he’s dead but he comes back to play with me, he was here, he was at school, he plays with me, he is my _brother_ , it doesn’t matter if he’s dead, he’s still here, still here, I’m here, we are here – why do you keep saying we’re dead, when we’re not _we’re not WE’RE NOT!_ ”

Sebastian’s howling speech ended in angry, noisy tears. He flung himself away from Nora and he crawled to the end of the bed and he buried his hot, flushed face in the pillow and– Nora was helpless. Nora sat there, pathetic- World’s Worst Mother. _What have I done to my son? What am I still doing? What damage am I_ _about to inflict?_ Nora was in anguish.  
  
 _Should I have ignored his confusion in the first place, in Surrey?_ If Nora had never entertained any suspicion, if she had insisted he was Sebastian, he might have stayed Sebastian. But now, Nora had to do this.

Bad mother. Evil mother.

She waited a few minutes for his anger to subside. The radio played more tinny pop music: “Live While We’re Young”. Then Britney Spears.

At last, Nora put a hand on Sebastian’s ankle. “Sweetie.”

He turned. Red-eyed, but calmer. “Yes.”

“Sebastian?”

He did not flinch at the name. Nora was sure now that he was Sebastian. _My Barry is dead._

“Sebastian, I’m just going into the kitchen for a second to get a hot drink. Do you want something? Something to drink?”

He eyed her. Blank-faced. “Fruit Shoot.”

“OK. You read a book and I’ll get us a drink.”

Sebastian seemed to have accepted this. He reached out for Wimpy Kid, and as he did, Nora quietly closed the curtains. So that not a chink of light could get through: it was not difficult, the moon was clouded, and the Central City skies, although they were so high up, were quite dark and grey with dusk.

Then, as discreetly as she could, Nora bent to the floor, as if she were picking up toys. But was secretly unplugging his nightlight.

Sebastian did not notice. He read on, his lips slightly moving. Barry used to do that.

Now, Nora had one final task: turn off the main light and shut the door. Sebastian would be slammed into total darkness; engulfed in the worst of his fears. There were tears not far from Nora’s own eyes, as she walked to the door.

_Can I do this? How can I not do this?_

Quickly, Nora slapped the light off, then stepped outside Sebastian’s bedroom and shut the door. The hall beyond was also gloomy, barely lit by the light from the living room down the way. Sebastian’s bedroom will be immersed in total dark.

Nora waited. There was a fierce burn of guilt in her chest. _Oh, baby. Sebastian. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._

How long would it take for him to scream?

Not long.

Not long at all.

Three seconds after Nora shut the door he screamed: and it is a high, piercing, shrill distinctive scream, like something thin and metallic being sheared in two. It was unmistakable and horrible; it was piercing and unique.

Opening the door, Nora snapped on the light and rushed to her bewildered and horrified son, wailing in his bed.

_“Mommy Mommy Mommy—!”_

She was cradling him in her arms; crushing him to herself.

“Sorry, darling. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I forgot, I forgot about the light, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so so so sorry.”

But in the middle of Nora’s stabbing guilt there was just one appalling thought.

It was Sebastian that died.

This was Barry sitting here.

_We got it wrong, fourteen months ago._


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course I had to post a chapter on the anniversary of the Particle Accelerator explosion! Enjoy.

Henry called Nora on the phone the next morning. It was a Saturday. He wanted Nora to come over and pick him up from Coast City at five a.m.

“It will be dark.”

“What? Nora? What?” Henry was with Ronnie and Martin at some bar. Nora had half a mind to call Stein and tell him to police all of their drinking.

“Won’t it be dark? Henry?”

“Full moon-” he said; Nora thought.

The line frazzled into nothingness. Nora checked her watch: eleven p.m. In six hours she would have to meet her husband in Coast City, and then tell her husband that they made the most grievous error, that Sebastian was dead and Barry is alive.  _How will he react? Will he even believe me?_

Nora stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room, looking east, at the buildings, dark but lots of lights. For some reason the sight- the mere existence – of the lights always soothed her. Calming beacons, serene and aloof. Flickering every nine seconds at night, signalling the world: _here we are._ Henry, Nora and Barry Allen. _We are  three._

Earlier in the day, Nora took Barry to the pier for a distraction; he was solitary, playing down on the rocks in his new red wellingtons, walking in the rock pools, looking for little fish and pulsing urchins. It seemed so easy to call him Barry. _He is Barry._

Barry was back. Sebastian had gone. Nora was mourning for the second time, yet quietly, and guiltily jubilant.

Barry had returned from the cemetery, the dead. Her second son, the one who loved rock pools, the one who loved staring at the sea urchins, watching their delicate contracting softness, was alive, once again.

Barry turned and looked at her, then he ran up the incline of salty grass to the top of the pier, to show Nora some shells he had collected.

“Hey, very nice.”

“Can I show them to Dada?”

“Of course you can, Barry. Of course.”

The shells were wet and sandy and graciously freckled with blue striations, fading to yellow and cream. Nora took them home that morning and washed the grit from them, under the tap.

In the moment: “Keep them safe, Daddy is coming home later.”

When Nora had changed his boots for converse, he disappeared happily to his room. In the silence of the day, she made soup to dispel her anxious thoughts.

The time passed without terrors. It was four-thirty a.m., and dawn was upon them when Nora peered her head around Barry’s door and asked him to come and get Dad from the pub. She didn’t like Barry seeing him like that- but leaving him alone…a pause. Maybe Nora would reconsider.

He stood there, in his dark jeans and red sweater, and his black converse, in his draughty bedroom. Shaking his head.

“But Daddy wants to see you.”

“Nn. Don’t want to.”

“Bear-ry. Why not?”

“Just not. Just not. Not now.”

“Barry, you’ll be alone in our house.”

It seemed so easy to call him Barry. Maybe Nora knew, subconsciously, he was Barry all along.

Barry shook his head. “Don’t mind!”

Nora had no desire to fight her son that afternoon, she’d too much to worry about confronting Henry. And there was no reason why Barry wouldn’t be safe in their apartment, as long as he didn’t leave or answer the door. She’d be gone for thirty minutes. He was seven and he could sit safely in a house on his own. There were no balconies.

“OK, then come here. Just promise to stay in your room, OK?”

“Yes.”

Nora gave him a hug. Then, kissed his shampoo-scented hair and he retreated, obediently, to his room.

The dark had gathered itself, and it surrounded the apartment Sun was barely peeking out from the clouds.

The drive was tired and lonely and only fifteen minutes from the north half of Central City. Henry it seems, was right; the dawn was clear and calm.

And there he was: Nora’s husband waited outside some bar close to the highway, with the lights of the pub behind. He was in dark jeans – but a V-neck jumper with a checked shirt. He seemed energized, smiley, maybe happy from his first day of proper work in a while?

“Hey, gorgeous. Right on time.”

Henry leapt down the steps and into the car and kissed her, he smelt of whisky but not too much. Perhaps a quick warming glass in the Coast Pub. Nora was surprised, and pleased.

“How’s Sebastian?”

“He’s …"

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The big building of the billionaire was dark and empty. The black fir trees defended it, in their legions.

“Nora?”

They got home soon enough. Henry could walk up the front stairs fine, and remember what button to press in the elevator. Not bad.

Barry heard them and he ran out from his room to hand his dad the shells he found; Henry cupped them in his big hands and said,

“Hey. Slugger. These are beautiful. Really, lovely. Thank you.” Henry leaned and gave him a kiss on his small pale forehead. Then Barry skipped back to his room, past the painting of the harlequin.

Nora sat Henry at the table and she made them both morning coffee. He was very silent. As if he was expecting something big. _Does he already suspect? Surely not._

As calm as Nora could, she pulled up a chair, and sat down opposite. And she said: “I’ve got something to tell you.”

“OK.”

Nora’s breathing was deep, but even. She continued, “It wasn’t Barry who was murdered, it was Sebastian. We got it wrong. We made an error. The boy in that room – our surviving son – he is Barry.”

Henry said nothing. He sipped his coffee, his blue eyes fixed on Nora’s. Not blinking. But fierce. Like a predator, watching.

Nora felt a sudden sense of peril. Of being menaced, as she did in the attic. Her childhood stammer momentarily returned. “I sh – I sh.”

“Nora. Slow down.” He glared. Dark, and brooding. “Tell me.”

“I turned off all the lights in his room. To make him scream.”

His frown deepened. “What?”

“Remember how the twins screamed differently when they were really scared, when that phobia was triggered? Remember? The power cut? So I did it again. Plunged him into darkness. Yes I know, it was horrible but-” the guilt was getting to her. She hurried on “—but it’s not something you could fake, is it? That scream was a reflex, it’s fear, it is an instinctive difference, so – so that’s it – he screamed like Barry when he was in the dark. So he is Barry. He must be.”

He sipped coffee again. Nora wished he’d respond normally. Or in any way. Maybe cry. Shout. _Do_ _something._ React badly.

But all she got was this menacing stare. He swallowed coffee and said: “That’s it? A scream? A scream is your only evidence?”

“No – it’s not just that, God, there’s so much more.”

“OK. Tell me. Slow down. What else?”

Henry wrapped his big hands around his mug. Tight. He takes another gulp, his eyes never leaving Nora’s.

“Tell me, Nora. Tell me everything.”

He was correct, he needed to know everything; and so, like someone purging a night of alcohol, Nora chucked it all up. Voiding herself of lies and evasions, redeeming herself with the truth. She told him about the behaviour of the dog, the literacy issues, the switch of friends, the tantrum in the school, the weeks of strangeness, the way their son would only now let her call him Barry. She told him about the visit to Ronnie’s wife at S.T.A.R., and how it convinced her, for a moment, that she was wrong, but then the doubts crept back. More persuasive and convincing than ever before.

“He is Barry,” Nora said, in conclusion. Staring at her husband who stared back.

She could see the teeth grinding in his jaw, under the stubble. She stumbled on, “We – I – made some mistake, somehow, Henry, it was just because of that one line, that sentence, after the accident, I presumed too much, maybe Barry got confused – remember they were swapping identities at that time, playing games, fooling about, wearing the same clothes, asking for the same haircuts. Remember all that and then the murder, who knows, maybe there was some telepathy, when Sebastian was in hospital and then he woke up and- and then he died, we cannot know for sure, some mingling of their minds, like – like the way they mingled in the cot, sleeping in the same bed – sucking each other’s thumbs.”

Henry still said nothing during Nora’s monologue. But his grip on his mug was so hard she could see the straining whiteness of his knuckles. As if he were going to pick it up and smash it in her face. He was angry and he was going to be violent. Nora was scared, yet not scared. _Henry is going to hit me, to ram the Edinburgh Castle coffee mug in my face._ Nora was telling him _his favourite twin is dead and that mine has been resurrected._

But Nora didn’t care, she had to say it.

“The boy in that room is Barry. Not Sebastian. We buried Sebastian, Barry is still alive.”

_Here it comes_. His reaction. Henry drained the last of his coffee. He put the mug down on the stained and  dusty  table.  The  moon was white and horrified outside, Nora could see her through the windows.

Gawping.

At last, he spoke.

“I know it’s Barry.”

Nora gazed his way. Stunned into muteness.

He shrugged at her bewilderment. Yet, he was also tensed, and muscled. Then he said, “I’ve known for awhile.”

She was dumbed. He sighed, loudly.

“Guess we’d better get the death certificates changed.”

Nora’s silence was pathological.

Henry stood and went into the kitchen. Pans and plates rattled in the sink. Jett skittered into the dining room, then stopped to looks at Nora; his unclipped claws have scratched the floor. They needed a carpet in there, or some rugs. Everything was bare and cold and hard.

From somewhere, Nora found the energy to respond. She went into the kitchen, where Henry was washing cups under the tap in the big steel sink. Her husband’s thick fingers rinsed and cleaned the mugs. Obsessively.

“Martin and Clarissa have invited us for dinner next Thursday. They’ve got some scientist friends staying, there’s a big wedding in Keystone.”

“Henry.”

His back was facing hers as he methodically did the dishes; he was gazing at the dark kitchen window – the kitchen that faced toward an adjacent building, a horizon of deepest blue that was the steel against the stars and darkness.

But Nora could also see his face, reflected in the window glass by the kitchen lights. He did not realize this. And Nora could see intense anger on that handsome face: a twisting, suppressed rage.

Why?

He caught Nora looking at him, and the anger disappeared. It was hidden away very quickly. Now he set the mug to dry on a rack and he turned, plucking a tea towel, carefully drying his fingers of the suds.

He spoke at last.

“About six months ago …” He paused, and dropped the tea towel on the island. Looked up again.

“Barry came to me and told me what he told you. That he was Barry. That it was Sebastian that died. That we got it wrong. That you got it wrong. That we all got it wrong.”

The dog was in the kitchen, whimpering, for no apparent reason. Sensing the tension, perhaps?

Henry glanced at Jett, and nodded.

“I also noticed the dog. Behaving differently. With Barry.”

“Jett? You-”

“So. Adding it up, I thought – Well, I thought Barry might be right. Or, rather, telling the truth. That’s why I got Barry’s toy out.”

“He asked for the toy?”

“No.”

“Sorry. What? I don’t see …"

“It was a test, Nora. An experiment. Just like yours.”

“Sorry? What kind of test?”

“To see how he reacted. Testing Barry. Or testing Sebastian. See if he reacted differently to his own toy, Barry’s toy.”

“And? Did he?”

“Yep. I got the Iron Man out, secretly. Without him knowing. Got it from the attic. And I put it in Sebastian’s room, mixed with all the other toys. And then I watched him without him knowing. See how he responded.”

“You watched him secretly?”

“Yes. And as soon as he realized it was there, he went straight for Iron Man. He clearly preferred Barry’s toy. Entirely unprompted. But emphatic.”

But of course: now, Nora got it. The logic was clear – and gratifying. That’s Henry. Logical and sensible, clear yet creative: a doctor, a problem solver. He thought of a subtle test, for their son, with a toy. Much less distressing than Nora's. _Do no harm._

_"_ So you knew all along, or you suspected, so – you agree? You really think he is Barry?”

Henry leaned back, his hands on the edge of the sink, as he faced her. Defiant,  or maybe contemptuous? _Or am I just imagining this?_ Nora’s confusion was a whirlpool; and she was drowning.

“But, Hen, why didn’t you tell me then?”

“Didn’t want to upset you. Wasn’t sure.”

“That’s it? That’s your reason?”

“What else? What did you want me to do? You’d barely gotten over, you hadn’t gotten over Sebastian’s death. Then, I slope up and say, _Oh, by the by, you got it wrong at the accident?_ Wrong kid. Come on, Nora. Really? Was I really going to do that? To add to your pain?”

His frown softened to something else. Not quite a smile; but not a scowl either. Henry shook his head and, as he does, Nora saw a glisten in his eyes, the wetness of emotion. Not tears, but close. And Nora was pained for him, as she was pained for all of them. This must be so very hard for him. He’d been dealing with this alone. And here I am, being the accuser. For months he has been coping with the desperate knowledge as best as he could. And he has lost Sebastian as he thought he lost Barry.

Nora said, “So he is Barry?”

“Yes. If that’s what he believes, and it seems that is the case, then that’s who he is. We have no choice. It’s Barry, Nora. Sebastian died. There. That’s it. That’s that.”

He swallowed emotion. Then, across the kitchen, he opened his arms, beckoning. And Nora felt a surrendering inside her: she was tired of that renewed and anxious hostility between them. They needed to be a family, to move on together. Barry Allen and his parents. Nora crossed the kitchen and he hugged her and she rested her face on his shoulder.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s make some dinner. Me, you and Barry. And Jett the useless dog.”

Nora managed to laugh, and she almost meant it. And so they went into the living room. Henry turned on a football game and Nora cooked up some pasta and then Henry called, gently, down the hall into Barry’s bedroom, “Barry, Bear,” and he came running out and this was the moment, this was the moment – yet he just hugged him around his waist as high as he could reach his arms, and he tousled his brown hair, and kissed the top of his head, and Henry said _Barry Barry_ and Nora could see that he meant it.

He called him Barry, she called him Barry, he thought he was Barry. He was Barry. That was it.

So easily the identity was changed.

Too easily?

_We need to mark this. We can’t just switch from one name to another, one identity to another, as if it’s an everyday occurrence._ They’d have to do something serious and symbolic. Perhaps a funeral- almost certainly a funeral. Nora’s son Sebastian was dead and that needed to be remembered. Properly.

But that could wait. Right then, Nora wanted that evening to be a resolution, to be final, to be some kind of catharsis for them all. And it was: up until the time when she had cooked dinner and Henry finished the washing up, again, and Barry was playing with Jett on the rug in front of the football game.

Then, Nora’s mind cast back. She thought of Henry’s expression in the window. He was furious. There was a deep, fierce anger there. It was as if Nora had uncovered a terrible secret, and he hated her for it; but what _was_ that secret?

Something in his account was disquieting to her, still. He was prepared to let Barry go on being Sebastian, possibly for ever, just to avoid upsetting Nora? Really? Did that make sense? Nora knew she did the same to him, but that was only for a few weeks, and Nora always intended to tell him on time. So maybe it was more the case that he _wanted_ Barry to stay Sebastian, because he preferred Sebastian? So he kept it quiet?

But even that seemed bizarre, and wrong.

Henry sat next to Nora on the sofa and put an arm around her shoulder. This was it: or this was _meant_ to be it. The moment. Them three, a family. Cosy in their city apartment.

And there they were. The dog, the son, the cold bright night outside, the flashing of the city lights in the buildings adjacent, calling out to all the other apartments, along the city coast: to Keystone and Yaletown, to Coast and Eastside.

This was what Nora dreamed of all those nights when she gazed at the laptop screen, and the crystal images of their Cental City apartment, with the industrious interior by the sea. And everyone and everything forgiven. Or forgotten.

Yet Nora was having to force herself not to shrink away from her husband’s touch. She sensed Henry knew something else. And he was still not telling her. And whatever it was, it was so bad he would lie, and had lied for months. Maybe fourteen months.

_Or…maybe I should get a grip and let it all be._

The football team won. Barry played. Their melancholic dog snored, and dreamed, his muzzle twitching. Henry read a big book about a Japanese architect of concrete churches. _Tadao Ando._ Nora sipped some wine, then yawned herself from half-sleep. She needed to do a few chores before she could sleep properly: so many of Barry’s school things needed sorting.

Making her way into the big bedroom, Nora switched on the feeble side light. There was a folded note on the bed. _A note?_

Nora’s heart sent out the alarm. The note had big childish letters on the front.

_To Mommy._

Nora’s fingers were trembling – and she was not sure why – when she opened the note and read. And then her heart trembled, too.

_Mommy. He is in here with us. Sebastian._


	14. Chapter 14

Henry sat in the bedroom watching Nora get ready for supper at the Steins’. There was a time when this would have been a sensuous interlude: his wife would half-turn, and ask him to zip the back of her dress; he would oblige, sowing delicate kisses on the whiteness of her neck; then he would watch her dab perfume _there_ and _there_ and _there_.

Now, he had to resist the urge to walk out, or worse. How long could he do this?

And now, he had to pretend that _Sebastian_ was Barry.

His wife slipped on her shoes, nearly ready. Henry regarded the fine muscles of her shoulders, revealed by her backless dress, as she curved to smooth her tights. The softness of the skin above her spine; the subtle beauty, glinting. He still desired her. But it was all meaningless now.

Perhaps he could convince himself, over time, that Sebastian was Barry? He thought he knew the whole of it, understood everything, but there was a strangeness here. Sebastian was acting differently.

He was acting like Barry, the dog was behaving oddly and differently. And he believed Nora about the scream. Could Henry have gotten it wrong, too?

_No, this was stupid._ He was getting lost in these reflections. A labyrinth of darkened glass.

“Can you go and get Barry?”

She was asking him, directly.

“Henry? Hello? Barry. We need Barry ready. Now. Can you go and get him, please?”

Her instructions were clipped, and careful. Much like everything she said, now. It had the troubling subtext: _We know this is a nightmare, but we have to try. Or pretend._

“Yes, OK.”

He walked towards Sebastian’s room. No, he walked towards _Barry’s_ room. He had to pretend he was Barry. He had to start believing he was Barry, he had to _think_ he was Barry, for the moment, to keep the family stable. It was like learning a foreign language: he had to think in that language.

Henry knocked and opened the door.

His little boy was dressed, handsomely, in a checkered button-up shirt, and a maroon sweater like Nora always put him in. Just standing there. In the middle of the room, unspeaking, and alone. Why was he doing that? Increasingly, his son’s behavior unnerved him: again he felt a tingling panic. Time was running out. He had to rescue him from this madness. But he didn’t know how.

He asked, “Will there be other kids there, Dada?”

“Maybe,” he lied. “Think Harrison Wells has kids.” No, he didn’t.

“Harrison who?”

“Wells. You’ll like him, he’s a bit weird and woolly, but he knows everything about everything-”

“No he doesn’t, Dada, no one knows _everything_ about _everything_ , except maybe God and I don’t know if HE is clever enough to know all that?”

Henry gazed at his son. _This was new, this God stuff. Where did it come from?_ Eastside School didn’t seem especially tambourine-bashing; maybe he had new friends who were religious. But then, he remembered his son had no friends. He kept telling him this: _Daddy, no one will play with me._

It cut him to pieces. Because it was no wonder no one would play with him: all the other children probably thought he was crazy. _The kid with a dead brother, come back to life. The freak._

And it was all his mother’s fault. Could Henry ever forgive Nora? All he ever did was forgive her, time after time. Yet he needed to love and absolve Nora, once again, if this was going to work.

But too often he felt the violent opposite of love.

“OK, let’s go.” He shouted down the hall, “Nora? Nora!”

“Yes, ready.”

The three of them assembled in the kitchen; Henry picked up his coat and they rode the elevator down to the garage, where they climbed into their SUV, and Henry drove them to S.T.A.R. Labs, which he had to re-inform Nora about. Apparently, this “dinner” that Martin invited them too was much more than a little get together.

It was a cold night, clear and sharp; the stars were reflected perfectly in the waveless waters. The car ride was silent: each member of the family staring out of a different window, at a different darkness.

Henry had wondered if he should cancel this social engagement, given the ongoing horrors of his son’s bewilderment: given everything. But it was Nora, surprisingly, who had insisted they had to aim for normality.

Even though they were struggling, they had to pretend they were doing OK - as if that might, magically, make things OK.

So here they were, in a simulacrum of nice clothes, stepping inside the big angular building, was led by a stranger to S.T.A.R.’s banquet hall, and there in the enormous space, doyenne of her expensive jewelry, was Clarissa Stein. Laughing by the stage, standing over trays of canapés. Two other couples were sipping Aperol spritzers from elegant glasses by the kitchen table, and everywhere Henry inhaled the smell of decent cooking.

“Just a bit of roast pork, I’m afraid,” Clarissa said, apologetically, as she took them somewhere to store their coats. “Not quite up to Michelin tonight. But Martin will be speaking.”

They stepped into the dining hall, with its expansive windows, rented out for its pricey views of the Central Sound; flutes of something bubbly were dispersed. Martin spotted them from over in some corner, he cleaned up well in a suit.

“Here,” said Martin, “We’ve actually got some nice wine: Trentodoc by Ferrari,  proper Italian champagne, none of that prosecco stuff.”

“How would you know, Martin? You haven’t had a drink in ten years.”

“I can tell by the bubbles. I am still allowed bubbles.”

Everyone joked in a faintly effortful way: Clarissa made elegant introductions between the couples, as they arrived. They were all there for the sciencey-affair that Nora probably knew more about than Henry; Ronnie was there, though, with his wife Caitlin. The CEO of S.T.A.R. Labs, Harrison Wells, with his wife, Tess Morgan, then a younger couple, Laurel and her boyfriend Oliver Queen (billionaire); there were no other children. These couples were here for the new yearly engagement between most of the scientific research facilities, the richer ones: to which he and Nora were not invited. This was only the rehearsal dinner for the house speakers.

Henry didn’t care about the science, he cared about his son. Alone, _again?_ Why couldn’t these ridiculous people have brought at least one kid between them, someone for him to play with?

Henry struggled with his irritation, even as the other adults doted, dutifully, on Barry – for about three minutes of clear boredom – then returned to their glasses of sparkling Italian wine and grown-up conversation.

After that, his son stood there, mute and alone with Leopardy the Leopard under one arm and Henry wanted, fiercely, to save him from all this, and take him away, take him to live in Keystone City or something. Just the two of them. Where he’d been happy with his brother and his friends as boys. Where he could be happy with _his_ little boy.

Henry listened and watched as his son asked his mother if he could go somewhere else, and read his book about dinosaurs. And then it turned into his son asking his mother if he could sit in the room _with_ them and read his book about dinosaurs. And _then_ he asked his mother if he could play a game on the phone.

“Mommy, _please_ , I can play with Dada’s phone? It’s got Angry Granny on it and everything.”

“But-”

“Mommy. Please. I’ll be quiet?”

Nora rolled her eyes, meaningfully, at Henry, but Henry had no desire to keep Barry down here: where he would be _bored_ , and possibly start acting up. And he could _imagine_ the ways he would act up, if he wanted.

His son was haunted. And Henry knew why.

“Let him play if he wants,” he said in a curt whisper, to Nora.

His wife nodded, and turned, to explain to Clarissa- as she returned from the stage area, where some CSO was talking. She was flushed from the evening’s events, and distracted. She laughed and said:

“Of course! Of _course_ he can go upstairs somewhere. God, I wish there were more kids here for Sebas, I mean, um um um, Barry to play with, um …"

Clarissa paused, clearly embarrassed. Henry frowned at his wife; Martin and Clarissa had been told about the Sebastian–Barry thing only the other day. Clarissa’s mistake was entirely understandable. But awkward.

The other guests were, it seemed, unaware of any of this. A puzzled silence descended on everyone, then Martin said:

“No, really, it’s not for want of trying. We may have to adopt bloody llamas at this rate.”

They all chuckled uncomfortably and the moment passed. Pleasantries were swapped. The scientific goals of the facility were discussed, then the weather. Oliver Queen, the billionaire son, asked Nora about property prices and the value of Granville and holidays in Europe, and as the chatter drifted in its upper-class way Henry surged with unspoken resentment.

These rich people with their villas and their auctions and their stock options: what did they know?

These people had never had to worry about anything. Why was he listening to this bourgeois prattle?

His grandmother was a farmwife, his mom a humble teacher, his dad a drunken docker, a wife-beater, an alcoholic. Henry knew. And they didn’t.

Henry drank.

And drank. And brooded. He wondered if he was able to keep it together for just an evening any more; he wanted to walk out as they sat down to langoustine, served with some of the catering company’s best mayonnaise and fresh bread.

The food was predictably delicious; his mood was worsening. He wanted to say it out loud: _my life is nothing, it is falling apart, my son is dead and my other son is insane. And sometimes I have terrible and serious fantasies about hurting my wife because she wants to have a funeral for a child who is still alive._

He wanted to announce this, calmly. He wanted to watch everyone else turn and stare in horror.

Instead, Henry said:

“We need interest rates to stay low, of course.”

“Oh, they will, another crash would kill the country off completely, there’d be lepers on Pall Mall.”

The wine came: plentifully. Henry noticed that his wife was drinking too much, as well, almost as much as he was drinking.

“Oh yes just another.”

Just another, just another, _just one more._

The main course was suckling pig – local – with excellent crackling, damson plum sauce, and a tremendously fashionable vegetable he could not identify, and then the conversation moved on to death, and ghosts.

Why the hell were they talking about this? At this time?

Henry plowed his way through his tenth glass of wine. He sat back and slurped and wondered if his teeth were stained red by the wine, as Caitlin Snow-Raymond pronounced:

“Chatwin is rather good on this, in his Australian book, he says our fear of ghosts is a fear of predators, of being prey.”

Clarissa put down her fork, and came back: “I’m sure I read that you can mimic ghosts, or the effect of ghosts, by subjecting people to a subsonic growl – you cannot hear it, the same growl used by predators to terrify their prey.”

“Really? And this is all hypothetical, of course. We study science.”

“Well, yes. They’ve tested it, on people, the subsonic noise cannot be registered by the ear but we hear it in our minds, that’s the nameless dread people describe when they experience ghosts!”

_Try being me,_ thought Henry, _try being me and my son, about six months ago, in Granville, if you want Nameless Dread._

He looked round the table. His wife still looked anxious: slurping wine too fast. And she was silent, of course. From nowhere, from the past, from some dim, barely understood part of himself, Henry felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for her, a sudden sense of fraternity, and mutuality. Whatever else divided him and Nora – and it was _so_ _much_ , it was surely _too much_ – they were going through this nightmare together. He could almost forgive her for everything else: as she was his comrade-in-arms, in this. And he had loved her once, quite intensely.

But how did that work? How could he still entertain these feelings about Nora  even as he daydreamed, wildly, about making her suffer for what she’d done? Perhaps when you had a child together there was always a residual connection of love, even if it was later drowned. The love was still down there: like a sunken ship. And when you shared the death of a child you were bonded for eternity. And they had not only shared the death of a child, they had shared it twice, and now they had resurrected the other.             He and Nora, they were grave robbers. Necromancers. Raisers of the dead.

But Henry was drunk and confused and he didn’t care.

Caitlin was still talking: “And that’s why people get spooked in old houses, cellars, churches, these places have echoes and resonances, timbres of the air, thanks  to the topography, and these air vibrations cause the same subsonic vibrations as predators growling.”

“Almost too neat an explanation. For ghosts.”

“Has everyone got enough wine?”

“This suckling pig really is excellent.”

“They say when people are mauled by cats, they go into a kind of quiescence, a kind of Zenlike state.”

“How would they know, if these poor wretches have been consumed by tigers? Do they interview them in heaven?”

“Ronnie!” Caitlin playfully slapped her husband.

The Laurel woman spoke up: “If that theory is right, it kinda makes the entire Bible a kind of growl by God, threatening everyone with death!”

“The booming voice of Jehovah. The fire in the trees. Is this wine really Rioja, Martin? Gran Reserva surely, it’s terrific.”

“I’ll have more wine, yes,” said Henry, “thanks.”

He reclaimed his glass, full and heavy, and he drank half of it, in one deep slug.

“Does that disprove the existence of God, the fact it can be explained as a fear of predation, of death?”

Martin intervened: “Well, I’ve always been of the opinion that we are meant to be believers. After all, children believe by nature – they are instinctively faithful. When my brothers and I were six, they implicitly believed; now they are grown up, they are atheists.”  
  
“Kids also believe in Santa. And the Easter bunny.” added Caitlin.

Martin ignored her: “Therefore life is, perhaps, a kind of corrosion? The pure true believing soul of the child is rusted, over time, polluted by the years-”

“You haven’t read enough Nietzsche, Martin, that’s your problem.” Harrison Wells was saying.

“I thought you said his problem was internet pornography?” said Ronnie, and everyone laughed and Ronnie teased his pompous older friend again, and Clarissa made a deprecating joke about calories, but Henry stared at Martin, wondering if he was, actually, quite profound. Every so often his friend said something startling or curious that everyone half ignored, and yet sometimes, somehow, right now, these remarks made Henry want to vehemently agree, and he wondered if Martin, the award-winning physicist, knew the effect he was having. And then, Martin said this:

“It’s not so much my own death that is intolerable, it’s the death of those around me. Because I love them. And part of me dies with them. Therefore all love, if you like, is a form of suicide.”

Henry stared. And drank. And listened. And Ronnie had an argument about soccer with Oliver and Laurel, and Henry wanted to shake his friend by the hand, to lean over and say _Yes, that’s so true, everyone else is wrong. Why are they ignoring you? Everything you say is absolutely right – the death of those we love is so much worse than our own death, and yes all love is a form of suicide, you destroy yourself, you surrender yourself, you kill something in yourself, willingly, if you really love._

“I’m going to get Barry,” said Nora. She was standing up, beside him.

Henry was jolted from his reverie. He wiped the wine from his lips, and turned, and looked up.

“Yes. Good idea.”

The plates were cleared away. By the time Henry returned to the dining table, helping to carry dishes for the dessert with Ronnie – brown bread ice cream with some salted caramel thing, his son, Barry, was there with his mother, by the big black windows that looked onto the Sound.

“He can have some ice cream?” said Clarissa. And Nora touched Barry on the shoulder.

“Oh yes, darling, ice cream, your favourite?”

Henry watched. There was something amiss with his son.

Barry was staring at the darkened windows. The view of the moon on the water, the weird mix of rain and snow outside that couldn’t be heard, the silhouette of Keystone across the Sound. But the uncurtained windows also, of course, reflected the light within the room: the table and chairs, the art on the walls, the adults and their drinks. And the little boy in the sweater with the checkered shirt underneath and skinny jeans, with his father by his side.

Henry realized what was happening. Too late.

Barry screamed.

“Go away, _go away,_ I _hate_ you!!”

And he ran at the window and he charged into the glass with his little fists raised– and the glazing cracked and shattered with a terrifying crash; and then there was blood. So much blood. Too much blood.

 


	15. Chapter 15

Nora could see the terror on Henry’s face, on Caitlin’s face. Their fears were nothing compared to hers. She felt she’d been here before. On Granville.

Barry screamed again, he had pulled back from the shattered window; his scarlet, bloodied hands poised vertically in the air, like a surgeon waiting to be gloved.

Henry and Nora approached their son, tentatively, trembling, as if they were approaching a feral animal– because he backed away as they got close. But as he retreated, Barry stared at Nora. Alarmed. As if he was scared of himself.

Nora could hear Henry behind her, calling an ambulance, _Yes, S.T.A.R. Laboratories, Robson and Beatty Street, half a mile past the- you know where it is? Yes, please right away, PLEASE._

“Barry-”

“Barry …"

He said nothing. Rigid and red-handed, imploring, he continued to retreat. His quietness was almost as terrifying as the bleeding.

“Christ-”

“Barry-”

“Oliver, call the fucking ambulance!”

“I have, I am, I-”

“Barry, son, Bear …"

“Get water, Clarissa, bandages- Clarissa!”

“Barry, it’s OK, it’s OK, stay still – let me-”

Barry was still backing away, his hands raised in the air. The blood ran down his arms, the sweater cut and the shirt underneath, too. His blood dripping on the polished wooden floor.

“Please, Barry?”

“Mmmmmummmmy. What happened to me?”

Even as he spoke, Barry was still backing away, his hands raised in the air. The blood ran down his exposed elbow, dripping now onto the polished wooden floor.

“Please, Barry?”

Behind Nora, Caitlin ran in with a bowl of water and bandages, and tissues, and once again, Henry and Nora attempted to approach Barry, on their knees, arms beckoning: but he evaded them, sloping away, bleeding.

_Has he severed an artery, or is it just deep scratches?_

Nora was kneeling on something hard and sharp. Glass.

She stood – but Henry ran past her and he grabbed Barry, in the corner, and held him close to his chest; he was too shocked to elude him. Henry yelled at Nora: “Wash his hands, get the blood off, we have to see how bad this is.”

“Martin-”

“The ambulance is coming: five minutes.”

“Baby, baby, baby.”

Now, Henry was rocking Barry backwards and forwards in his own arms, saying _shhh,_ _shhh, shhh,_ comforting him, as Nora leaned close and began to sponge and daub the blood from his fingers, with the cold flannels and Caitlin’s bowl of water. Nora couldn’t see anything but the sponged blood, coiling in the bowled water like red smoke.

With a swoon of relief, Nora could see he was not so badly cut; her son had lacerated his palms and knuckles, and ripped the skin in multiple places, but it did not look arterial. The wounds were not that deep.

But there was lots of this blood; lots of blooded tissues were piling up; Caitlin whisked them away like an attending nurse.

“Jesus,” Henry was whispering as he held him tight. “Jesus.”

Caitlin, now exceedingly rational, replaced the tissues with baby wipes, ointment, and bandages. Harrison had led the others out of the hall to give them privacy.

“Hey,” Nora said, “Hey, Barry. Sweetness?”

Her son looked so vulnerably young here, in his father’s embrace, in his own clothes that they once thought were his dead brother’s, in that dark maroon stitched sweater. He looked so young, and so damaged. Nora observed that his white socks and black Chuck Taylors were speckled with blood.

_What can I do?_ Nora thought, despairingly. She knew he was unhappy, _I know he is too young to be this unhappy._ She hadn’t forgotten the note on her bed. _Sebastian is still here._ Why did he write that? What was preying on his mind? What anguish and doubt? So Nora’s grief battled her fears, which tussled with her guilt, as she washed his little fingers. As she squeezed the water and washed the worst of the bleeding.

Then, Nora said: “Darling. Bear. What happened just now?”

Of course, Nora knew what had happened. Or she could very well guess what had happened. He looked in the window and he saw himself, but he saw the image of his dead brother. The identity confusion was sending him into ever darker places.

Sitting on his father’s lap, Barry shook his head and hugged his dad closer, Henry was stroking his shoulders, gently, caressingly; he looked away from Nora, but spoke:

“Nothing.”

Nora daubed at the bloodstains, they were almost gone, now; it was her own fingers which were trembling. Nora really thought he had opened his wrists, _in some horrible, infant suicide bid? Or maybe, in fear of the ghost inside himself, the ghost he had become._

“Barry, why did you break the window?”

Henry glared at her. “We don’t need to ask that, not here, not yet, for God’s sake.”

Nora ignored him. What did he know? He wasn’t there, on Granville, that evening. _He’d_ never been through this before, _he’d_ not been to that place of particular terror, hearing a shout, discovering that your son was dead.

“Sweetheart, what was wrong, with the window? Was it like a mirror?”

Barry took a deep breath, and he hugged his daddy one more time, then he sat up and let Nora wipe the last of the blood from his knuckles.

_He might need stitches, he will definitely need plenty of plasters and bandages._

But most of all, Barry needed love, calm and peace, and an end to all scariness – and Nora didn’t know how they were going to find that.

Caitlin and Clarissa were on their hands and knees, brushing the chunks and angles of window glass into a dustpan; Nora winced, guiltily.

“I’m so sorry, both of you.”

“Please …" Clarissa shook her head, and gave Nora a smile of very serious pity, which made her feel worse. “Nora.”

Nora turned back to her son. She wanted to know.

“Barry?”

Abruptly, he opened his eyes very wide and stared at the broken window, its black jagged void, surrounded with fangs of glazing; then he turned to Nora and spoke, his voice quivering:

“It was Sebastian, he was here, he was in the window, Mommy, I saw him, but it wasn’t like last time, not like then, that time he was saying things, saying bad things, it was scary Mommy, but I- I- I-”

“OK,” said Henry. “Jumping Jack, slow down.”

Nora stared at him.

_Jumping Jack?_

That’s what he used to call Sebastian, sometimes.

_Jumping Jack._ It was a name from a nursery rhyme when his mom was a kid: she taught it to him.

_Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Jack jump over the candlestick._ That’s why he gave the name to Sebastian. Henry always told Nora about his favorite game, pretending the floor was lava.

Because Sebastian was the brave one, Henry’s favourite, the boy climbing trees, the roisterer doing fun things with Daddy, he would climb trees so high and yet he never fell, because he was nimble and quick. _Jumping Jack._ _He’s calling him Jumping Jack._ He was hugging Barry, and calling him Jumping Jack, the same way he would tightly hug Sebastian. Hugging him. Did that mean he still thought he was Sebastian? He knew something Nora didn’t? Or was this just the terror of the moment?

“Slugger,” he said, “You don’t have to tell us.” Back to the name he used alternatively between both of them.

“No.” Barry shook his head and gazed at Nora. “I want to tell _now_. Mommy?” He reached out his arms and he climbed into her arms and together they sat, mother and son, on the wooden floor with him on Nora’s lap.

He breathed in and out for a few seconds, and then he said, “Sebastian was in the window upstairs too and I couldn’t stop him, every time I looked he was there, every time, and he’s dead and he’s in the mirror at home, and now he was in here and he starts _saying_ things, Mommy, bad things, horrible things. This was different, Mommy. It makes me frightened. I’m so frightened of him, make him go away now, please, make him go away, he is my room and he is in the school and now he’s _everywhere!_ ”

“OK, OK …" Nora soothed her son, stroking his head. “OK.”

Martin appeared in the door again: abashed, and pallid: “The ambulance is here.”

Barry probably didn’t need the ambulance any more; Nora assuredly didn’t need some siren-wailing, life-saving dash to Central General; nevertheless, Henry carried Barry to the drive and clambered into the back, and Martin and Clarissa and the Wellses and Ronnie and Caitlin made their mumbled and slightly heartfelt goodbyes; and then they were the tiny, little family driving through the darkened roads of the city, sitting in the back of the ambulance with a silent paramedic.

Barry lay on the stretcher, his hands lightly bandaged. He was inert and sad  now. Passive. Expressionless. The ambulance speed. There was nothing to say. Central General greeted them with roundabouts, traffic, one large building and busy insides and Nora got an urgent yearning to be back in the suburb of Surrey. For the first time.

In the Emergency Room at the huge Central City hospital, they patched up Barry’s fingers with several delicate stitches, and ointments, and soothing creams, and proper bandages, and lots of compassion offered by fluting minority night nurses, and throughout it all, Nora and Henry stared at each other, and said nothing.

Then, the night nurse paid for their taxi because of Barry’s assumed silence, which she thought was adorable, probably, so they didn’t have to pay for the taxi.

Because Henry and Nora were, of course, over the drink-drive limit. They only had to drive half a mile from their apartment to the supper party so they didn’t bother staying sober. Now, it seemed awful to her. The shame of it mixed with the shame of everything else. _We are a shameful couple. Dreadful people._ They lost one son to a supposedly preventable murder and somehow, they were losing the other.

_We deserve all this._

Nora put Barry to bed; then both of went to their room and Henry tried to cuddle her and Nora pushed him away. She wanted to be left alone with her thoughts. He called him Jumping Jack. Nora was not sure what it meant.

That morning, they didn’t do anything; Barry was obviously not going to school, his hands were still bandaged and his eyes were still clouded with unhappiness, and Henry seemed content to stay at home, attending their daughter. Nora had to go into work, though. The three of them had coffee and juice and then Barry came with Nora to the window and they looked at a lonely umbrella many stories down on the street, sad, it looked like a circle: something with no beginning or end.

Then Nora left, and when she came home, she glanced at the scene that she arrived to.

Henry had Barry on his lap and they were reading _The Runaway Dinosaur_ , the way Nora used to read _The Runaway Dinosaur_ to the twins years ago. Nora looked at them. He was surely too old for that book, he looked– suddenly – a bit too old to be on his father’s lap: Nora forgot that he was growing up, despite all the horrors. Henry always liked to put Sebastian on his lap.

But perhaps, all this regression was comforting. Nora glanced down. The book on the floor was _Where the Wild Things Are._ There was another one, _The Polar Express_ , sitting on top of it. Of course. It was getting close to Christmas.

Nora remembered both of those books, along with _The Runaway Dinosaur_. _The Polar Express_ was all about still believing in Christmas, after all your adult friends didn’t. _Where the Wild Things Are_ was all about a kid who got sent to bed without supper and he decided to imagine his room was a jungle. Sebastian always liked reading interesting, adventure-y books, having no attention span for caring to understand the overall themes of any other. Barry liked the opposite. He didn’t like fantasy, but he liked talking about the book when it was done. He was the kind of inquisitive Nora cherished, loving how he tried to come up with a way storybook fantasy could exist in the real world. Of course, his imagination was never plausible, but Nora had missed it.

And now, Nora thought again, obsessively, about the note on the bed. She had not forgotten it, this last week, despite the intervening scares. Her little boy wrote that note. It _had_ to be him. No one else could have written it, not unless Henry was trying to torment her. And even if he _were_ trying to do that – and there seemed no possible motivation for him –  he surely couldn’t have faked that handwriting, not so precisely.

But Barry’s and Sebastian’s handwriting was, of course, identical. Barry could easily have done it.

That’s just how he wrote. Which means he really did it: he wrote it.

_And what do I do about this? Grab Barry and shake him until he confesses?_ Why should _he_ suffer, when it is mostly their fault? They called Barry Sebastian for a year, by mistake, because they made a tragic and stupid error, so inside himself, Barry must still be deeply confused as to where Sebastian had gone.

The remorse accumulated; Nora needed to get out – from under its weight.

“I’m going out again,” Nora said to Henry.

He shrugged. “OK.”

“I just need a walk. Just need to get out of here for a bit.”

His smile was tepid. “Sure.”

The tension between them remained, it was weakened only by the horror of the last day; they were too exhausted to mistrust each other. But the growing mistrust would return.

“I’ll pick up some groceries.”

“OK.”

He wasn’t even looking at Nora, now, just helping Barry to turn the page with his bandaged hands.

The sight of that pained her, so Nora stepped into the elevator, marched to the car, and drove herself to the _one_ place she thought she would _never, ever_ go.

Iron Heights Penitentiary.

 

  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh dear.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I know I couldn't leave you all on such a massive cliffhanger without posting the next chapter the next day! Sorry about the heart attacks.

They looked so judgmental, the prison guards. Like a row of inquisitors in black hats. Their shark-toothed words ripped at the heavy passing visitors, gutting them of their confidence. Why were they here? Yet still, the visitors came and went, in their endless and anguished turmoil, apparently without pattern.

But there was a pattern, here. And if Nora stared long enough at the others with badges, across the waiting room of Iron Heights, she would understand it.

That call with her mom in Jitters that day- Eobard Thawne, the man who murdered her son- was mad. He spoke at the trial as if he had _planned_ to kill her son, _planned_ to kill _Barry._ Barry.

But he hadn’t known which one was which. Nora hadn’t taken the trial into consideration at _all_ whilst dealing with her family’s issues, hadn’t taken the murderer into consideration because who was _he_ , to deserve those daily thoughts? Lurking in the back of her mind. Lurking in the back of her husband’s mind. Stuffed down into the deepest, darkest containment cell inside Nora’s head, like Thawne was stuffed down into the deepest, darkest containment cell inside Iron Heights. Nora refused to give him that satisfaction; she _refused_ to see his smirking, mad face inside that courtroom, the _yellow suit,_ the talks of the _future_ , and his _speed_ and how he could run faster than any man and no, he could not- because he had _lost it, somehow._ She refused to let that madman see he caused them the greatest pain known to humankind.

Thawne was charged for the first-degree murder of Barry Allen, amongst other things, because Nora and Henry decided that he had murdered Barry, not Sebastian, which was the gravest of all mistakes. He testified and plead guilty and told them the story. And he was insane.

But there was a pattern.

A pattern.

Nora could find the pattern if she thought hard enough; then she would understand everything.

They still hadn’t found a church for Sebastian’s funeral. They still hadn’t ordered the death certificate to be changed. They still hadn’t told anyone besides Martin, Clarissa, and Nora’s parents.

Nora knew that Thawne was a lying, mentally insane man who was planning a murder and her son just so happened to be the one he chose. There was no other obvious circumstance, according to the court. And Nora believed the court.

But she didn’t believe herself. She couldn’t trust herself to not break down and attack Thawne from behind the glass. Scream like an animal, waiting to be tranquilized because Sebastian was dead and Thawne was alive and _no_ , she would not ever have closure.

Her blood suddenly ran cold. She felt this odd need to talk to Thawne, but she knew that it would do her no good. So she went home.

The days mingled into each other: like the clouds over Central City. Henry went to his new job at a Keystone City doctor’s office, four, or five days a week- family medicine; Nora went to her job at Mercury Labs. Nora got emails from her old Surrey therapist, following up her grief from Sebastian’s death. It seemed trivial, and outdated, and irrelevant. All of it. Compared to what was happening to their son, right now.

He _had_ to go back to school or they would never succeed in Central City; but he was clearly reluctant. His bandaged hands were an excuse for him to stay home, but when the bandages were ceremonially removed, one evening, Nora decided, with Henry’s concurrence: he had to try again at the Eastside Elementary School.

Next morning, at 7:30am, they all took the car, as a family, across the bridge to Keystone. They dropped Henry off- by _god,_ they needed a second car- and Nora drove Barry and her back across the bridge to that Jitters place for an early morning breakfast until he had to start at school, at 8:30am, to which Nora would then drive herself to Mercury Labs to meet her 9:00am start time.

Barry looked miserable and apprehensive, lost in his oversized school clothes. His shy face peering out from the dark hood of his windbreaker, upgraded to deal with the snow on the ground.

The morning was milder, though, with no actively falling snow. All the kids were leaping up the path, scampering out of cars, heading for their classes, throwing off their coats and joshing each other. All except Nora’s son, who approached the school gates with tiny steps. _Will I be forced to carry him?_

“Come on, Barry.”

“Don’t want to.”

“It will be much better today. The first weeks are always the worst.”

“What if no one plays with me again?”

Nora ignored her sympathetic pain.

“They will, darling, just give them a chance. There are lots of new kids here, just like you.”

“Want ‘Bastian.”

“Well, Sebastian isn’t here any more. You can play with the other boys and girls. Come on.”

“Daddy likes Sebastian, he wants him back too.”

_What is this?_ Nora hurried on. “Here we go. Let’s take off your coat, you don’t need it now.”

Escorting him inside the glazed door, Nora shared a silent glance with Kara Danvers, who was gazing down at Barry.

“Hello, Barry. Are you feeling better now?”

No response. Nora put a hand on Barry’s shoulder. “Barry, say hello.”

There was still no response.

“Barry?”

Nora’s son managed a bashful, reluctant, “Hello.”

Nora looked at Kara and she looked at Nora and she said, rather too breezily:

“I am sure everything will be fine today. Mister Schuester is telling stories about dinosaurs.”

“Dinosaurs! Barry, listen, you love dinosaurs-”

Nora gently pushed her son in the back, propelling him toward the corridor, and slowly – very slowly – he walked, looking at the floor, a portrait of introversion. Then he disappeared into the school corridor. Engulfed.

When he was gone, Kara Danvers reassured her.

“We’ve told all the kids that Barry lost a brother, and can be a little confused; they won’t be allowed to tease him.”

Nora was meant to be soothed; but she was not convinced that this was better. Now, her son was indelibly marked out as odd: as the boy who lost a twin. The haunted brother. Perhaps the other kids had heard about the incident at S.T.A.R… _Oh yeah, that’s the crazy boy who smashed the window because he saw a ghost._

_Look at the scars on his hands._  
  
“Thanks,” Nora said. “I’ll be back at three-fifteen to pick him up.”

And Nora was. By ten minutes past three, Nora was waiting anxiously at the school gates with other mothers, and a couple of dads, whom Nora did not know: she painfully wished she _did_ know these people because then she could casually chat, and then Barry would see her interacting and, by example, it might help him to interact with his peers. But Nora was too shy to strike up conversations with these strangers:  these confident parents with their big 4x4s and their banter; it struck her once more how _much_ of this was _her_ fault – she had handed on her crippling shyness to Barry.

Sebastian would probably have been fine there. Certainly better at interacting. He would have bounced around, singing his songs, making other kids laugh. _Not Barry,_ Nora thought.

The children rushed out of the door at the allotted time, little boys ran into their mothers’ arms, girls walked out hand in hand, slowly, everyone appeared, and was embraced, and slowly the parents and kids dispersed; until Nora was the last parent left in the playground, under the cloaking dark sky, and then, her son emerged, unhappy in the doorway, and a young male teacher, Nora presumed Mr Schuester, shepherded him towards her.

“Barry!” Nora said. “Did you have a good time? Was it nice today? How were the dinosaurs?”

Nora _wanted_ to ask him: _Did anyone play with you? Did you pretend Sebastian was alive?_

Barry took Nora’s arm and Nora looked at the male teacher and he weakly smiled, then he left and returned to his classroom.

In the car, Barry would not talk. He was mute. He said a quiet _“No, thank you”_ to food, saying nothing else and went to his room and read. Then, he walked to the living room, bathed in moonlight, and stared at the flickering lights from all of the adjacent buildings. Nora watched him from the kitchen. Her son. Barry Allen. A solitary little boy, in a big apartment, in the dark. Quintessentially alone.

And so the days went on, similarly snowy, cold, and sad. Nora thought more and more about the murderer as she planned the funeral for the son they were supposed to bury in the first place: Henry agreed to do most of the phoning and paperwork, as he had more of a knowledge on how to do it. Nora could sense his reluctance. She did take Barry to school every day, and he was very silent; Nora picked him up from school every day, and he was very silent. He was always the last to leave the classroom.

On the fourth morning, however, Nora got them to school early: she was going to try something different. With a choke of guilt, Nora pushed Barry into a crowd of boys, from his year and his class, gathered at the school gate – and then she pretended to take a call on her mobile.

Barry would have no choice: he had to interact, or he would be standing there, quite painfully isolated.

Nora watched, pretending to converse on the phone. Barry looked as if he was trying to talk – to join this group of his peers. But they were ignoring him. He looked desperately back, at Nora, for support, or consolation, but Nora acted distracted, as if she was engrossed in her phone call. Then Nora stood nearer, eavesdropping.

Her hopes rose. It seemed as if Barry was going to do it: her son was going to talk to a schoolmate, to  communicate! He was shyly approaching a blonde boy: a strong, apparently confident child, chattering with his friends.

Nora listened as Barry said in a nervous voice: “Tony, can I tell you about my leopard?”

The boy- Tony- turned to Barry. He gave Nora’s son a tiny, appraising glance, then, he shrugged, and didn’t even reply. Instead, he looked away and talked to his other friends; and then the entire group of kids went happily wandering off, leaving Barry there, staring at his shoes. Rebuffed. And shunned.

Unbearable. Nora was wiping away barely hidden tears as she took him into the school building, as she walked to her car and started the engine. She had half a mind to call Joe and _beg_ him to transfer Iris from the Surrey school to this new one, just so Barry would have _one_ friend there. But Joe didn’t know Barry was Barry, and neither did Iris. Iris and Barry had been best friends, Barry’s partner in crime when Sebastian wasn’t, or couldn’t be. And when that seven year old girl thought Barry had died, well, it had been difficult. Because Iris had been distraught, and Nora heard this from Joe almost every night again, once she could regain the mental capacity to dial the phone.                 Iris, never close to Sebastian in that way, had been somewhat frosty, but friendly to Barry those days that followed. That time they helped with the move-in to the apartment in Central City. And Nora suddenly realized how shocking it must have been: to her poor Barry, who had been both mistaken by his parents and then devoid of the closeness he shared with his friends.

Asking Joe was ridiculous and out of the question, so Nora could only hope that the tears would go away, but they didn’t, they lasted all the way to Mercury Labs, where she did her development work. And by noon, the urge was irresistible.

_I have to see for myself._

Climbing in the car Nora drove too fast, down Beatty road, to Eastside Elementary,  on its green promontory, by the wind-tousled waves. The cold metallic sun had emerged: making the area shine frostily. Above a steely Sound.

Nora had wrangled her newest work acquaintance, and/or friend, Tracy, to cover for her. It was the end of lunchtime. All the kids would be on the playground, having eaten. Nora wanted to watch Barry again: to see if things had improved. She wanted to discover if he was interacting, or if he was being teased and mocked.

But Nora didn’t want to be seen, herself: so she crept up the side of the playground, on a little-used path, which wandered down and continued across the street to the shingly beach just beyond. She was sheltered, by winter’s thorny shrubbery, from the screaming happy kids beyond the chainlink.

Girls were hopscotching. Boys were rag-tagging. Nora scanned all the little pink faces, the white socks and skinny pairs of jeans, looking for the brown hair of her son. Nora could not see him. All the kids were, apparently, out there playing. But Barry?

Might he have been inside? Reading on his own? Nora hoped not. He must have been out there. _Please let him be out there, playing with someone else._

And there he was.

Nora closed her eyes and calmed herself. Then she gazed, properly.

Barry was standing in the far corner of the playground. Entirely alone. The nearest child, a small boy, was ten yards away: with his back to him. But even though he was conspicuously alone, Barry was doing something. What?

Nora went closer, still concealed by trees and bushes.

She was just a few feet’s distance, now. Nora saw that Barry was facing away from the school, from his classmates, isolated from the world.

He was quite alone – yet he was talking. Animatedly. Nora could see his lips move, and his arms wave. He was talking to the air, to the trees and the chainlink. He was actually smiling and laughing.

Now, Nora could hear him.

" _Nnneeooo nononon yes free up thrre up fff ... Wakey wakey no yes paka. Sufffy sufffffy nnnn. Mmmmm. Nana nana nana.”_

As he said this, Barry waved his arms, then he stopped, and listened, as if someone was talking right back at him. But no one was talking back at him. Then, he nodded and laughed and babbled some more.

It was the nonsensical twin language he shared with Sebastian. The twins kept it going right to the end.

Nora nor Henry could never work out what it meant.

Barry was talking to his dead brother.

 


	17. Chapter 17

Joe West set their visitors’ passes down on the center console in the parking lot at Iron Heights Penitentiary as the sun rose higher in the sky.

Henry said nothing. The morning was unusually warm.

“Iris has learned quite a bit more, she’s into English, like I was when I was a kid.” Joe broke the silence, and went on: “She’s doing quite well in school. I never would have expected it, going to such a place like Surrey Elementary…”

They were inside a car, momentarily letting Henry leave his thoughts behind. He inhaled some air. It was OK.

Henry suspected Joe never really understood why he asked to go and visit Iron Heights with a man like Henry. The phone call probably seemed random, but Henry knew that he must have been curious- their kids had been friends, after all. But their kids were not here.

“Ah, these odd things,” Joe was saying as he cranked the window back up, “Someone’s always gotta get them working right. You never told me who it was you wanted to see.”

“Oh,” said Henry, broken from his thoughts, “I just thought that you-”

The mood changed completely. Joe’s face took on a hard look, as if he had been expecting it. His dark brown eyes were frowning, but his forehead was unusually relaxed. It was a confusing look that Henry rarely saw on people.

“You tell me to show up here, and we’re visiting that bastard?” said Joe, voice deeper than it had been when it was just small talk.

“Would it be anybody else?” Henry’s face was gaunt and tired. He sighed, “Look, Joe, I really need you to keep this from Nora. Just for now. I needed someone with easy access that can get me in and out of here. I just have one question.”

“And what is that?” Joe looked like he didn’t want to be tested.

“I…” Henry swallowed, looking from the hall of the prison to the door on the far side, where the caller rooms were waiting. Perhaps this was the turning point? Perhaps things would change, now? As a minute passed by, Henry decided. The moment had arrived. He was going to tell Joe, because Nora was dancing between telling her friend the truth or not. And he was going to do it in the hallway of Iron Heights Penitentiary, right before he was about to pay a visit to the murderer of their son. Because he wanted to know _why_. And he had suspicions, too.

Henry put on his coat again, which he had to put back on because they were going to get out. But they didn’t, and Henry looked at Joe. Meaningfully.

It took a moment, but something in Joe’s expression changed, as he gave Henry that look, which said _I understand._

Henry was quiet. Trying to locate his courage. Joe instead broke the brief silence once more: “So, how is Sebastian, now? He doing better?”

Henry shrugged, and then, he answered. As if the boy who his wife suspected was Barry, but Henry thought he was still the same Sebastian was indeed, Sebastian.

“Kinda. Sometimes. But...he’s still acting up, too.”

“How?”

"Talking to his dead brother, acting like, um, Barry was- or rather is- there with him.” Henry edited his speech so that it would sound like the way Joe knew it. Barry originally died, Sebastian lived. And so on.

Joe stared. “He does that a lot?”

“Yes. A lot. He does it at school. At home. In the car. Sometimes it’s just normal talk, but often it’s in their twin language– so it’s eerie. Sometimes he moves and mimes, as if his twin is there, physically interacting. That is pretty strange to watch.”

“OK. OK. Jesus.”

“That’s what freaked him out at that dinner thing Nora told you about, I guess. She told you- oh, good. He thought he saw the ghost of his brother in the window. Reflected.”

Joe nodded. “Well, it would freak you out, though, wouldn’t it? I’m sorry.”

Joe hesitated then leaned forward to Henry, by a fraction. His voice skeptical,

“So. Does he really believe all this, Henry? Does your son, I mean, you know – does-”

“Is he crazy or is there really a ghost? Or is he just pretending?”

“Well-”

“Clearly there isn’t a ghost.” Henry stared at Joe, without blinking. “But he’s not, he’s not crazy.”

Joe frowned in confusion. “So he’s pretending? Is that it? Why on earth? Look, you don’t have to tell me, of course, but…”

Henry said nothing, feeling the bitterness inside him. And the urge to confess. He was tired of lying. Tired of deceiving people. But did he have the courage to be honest? He couldn’t and _wouldn’t_ tell everything – ever. But he would unburden himself of something.

Henry closed his eyes. He was going to do this. He opened them.

“Joe, you asked about Sebastian.”

“Yes.”

“You want to know the truth?”  
  
“Yes. But only if you want to tell me.”

“I do. I think. Yes I do.”

“Yeah.”

“OK, but what I’m about to tell you is a total secret, you must never tell anyone, ever. And I mean that. No one EVER.”

Joe nodded. Sombre in the gloaming. “Understood.”

“All right. Good.” Henry took a deep breath, and rubbed his hand over his mouth, feeling his own stubble. The cold air seemed heavy. Henry spoke, his words misting in the brisk air: “First you need some backstory.”

“OK.”

“You have to remember that Nora always preferred Barry. Nora was quite  emphatically her favourite.”

“All parents have favourites,” Joe said. “Or so I’m told.” It was why Joe only had one kid.

“Yes, but this was exceptional. She really favoured Barry, the quiet one, the soulful one, the one like her, the one who liked reading. She favoured him so much it became distressing to Sebastian. I tried to balance it out by being much nicer with Sebastian, but it didn’t work. _Father’s_ love isn’t as important or impressive. Can’t match a mother’s, not when they’re young, anyway.”

A pause. Henry couldn’t properly see his wife’s friend’s expression in the dim light of the car. And that was fine.

It made his confession more anonymous: like an actual religious confession, in a church, to a priest, the faces concealed. Henry continued,

“A couple of days before…the death, Sebastian actually told me he hated his mom, ’cause of all this, and I got very sharp with him. In fact I almost slapped him. I’ve never slapped my kids before. Ever. But I was drunk, and I lost my temper.” He shook his head, and went on, “And Sebastian was seriously upset. As you’d expect. First his mom favours his twin brother, then Daddy shouts?”

Again, Joe was silent. But his dark eyes were thinking, as Henry went on,

“And then it happened. You know. The balcony, and Thawne. After that, Nora fell apart, and we all fell apart, and it got worse, and worse ... And then, six months ago …" he paused for courage. “Six months ago my surviving son came to me and said to me: “Daddy, I did it. I did it. I killed my brother. I pushed him. ’Cause Mommy always liked him more, and now he’s gone.”’

Joe said, very quietly: “My God.”

“Quite.”

“Jesus …” Joe extinguished the cigarette under his boot heel. The silence was painful. Then at last, he spoke again: “But – Henry – could he – did he kill him? Thawne. Sebastian didn’t. He couldn’t have- can you believe him? _Did_ you believe him?”

Henry sighed, “Yes. Maybe. But he was just seven when it happened, seven when he said this. Did he even know what he was saying? Do they ever really know what they are saying at this age? Trouble was: his new explanation made sense, Joe. He had a motive, his mom’s absurd preference for Barry. And it fit with the evidence. I mean: why were Barry’s injuries so bad? From a twenty-foot fall? Kids normally survive falls like that, of that distance. So – why?”

“Because …?”

“Because he fell from the top floor, not the middle floor. Sebastian actually told me: they were... up on the top floor, then the twins ran onto the balcony, and that’s when Sebastian pushed Barry …”

“Still don’t quite picture it.”

Henry paused. Took a breath. And went on,

“It’s like this, he pushed him off the top balcony, then he – I guess he raced down to the first floor to look over that balcony at what he’d done – as you would – and that’s when Nora came in and found him yelling – _Barry, it’s Bear-ry, a man_ \- So that’s the explanation, that is what probably happened. Sebastian killed his brother. And it has happened in the past. I’ve done research. There is literature. Intense sibling rivalry in identical twins. Which can become murderous.”

“OK. But …” Joe was shaking his head. Henry could just about discern this, in the darkness of the car. “What about Eobard Thawne? The man who murdered Barry? You’re tellin’ me that he’s innocent?”

“No. No. Not at all,” Henry shook his head quickly, “The opposite. Sebastian may have pushed him, but Thawne was there to finish the job.”

Silence. Henry started again,

“Look, when Sebastian came to me and told me this, I panicked. Totally lost it. Sebastian was determined to tell his mom and his friends and his teachers – everyone. And his mom was massively unstable at the time, there was no way she could hear this. And Sebastian also wanted to tell the police, because he had intense guilt. He was falling apart, my own surviving son. So, yep, I panicked. Thawne was already put away, there was nothing to be done-”

“But if he-”

“What happens if a seven-year-old is accused of murder, Joe? Especially if that seven year old aided who was actually arrested? What do the police do? Anything? Everything?  Investigate? They would certainly investigate. There was circumstantial evidence backing him up. So I had to shut him up, calm him down, get him to disbelieve himself. It was easier to let them assume it was Thawne who did everything.”

“But was Sebastian helping Thawne, or-”

“No,” Henry answered, “I know my son. He would never talk to a stranger, much less get help from them. It was a coincidence that Thawne was there, a coincidence that he chose to murder someone that day.”

“And how did you shut him up?”

“I did whatever I could. I stopped him talking. I told him not to tell me any more. I said I didn’t want to know. I said no one _needed_ to know. Then I told him Barry wasn’t really dead.”

“What?”

“I explained that no one dies really, they go to heaven but part of them always stays with us, too. I told him about Barry waking up in hospital, told her that was Barry coming back. I gave him Barry’s favourite toy – look, he’s still here! I convinced him that twins are special and they don’t really die, because they are the same person and if one of them survives then they are both here. I blurred the identity inside him, I told him _you are Sebastian, but you will always have Barry with you, because you_ _are_ _his_ _twin_ _brother, and now you can go on living for the two of you._ And I told him all of this was a big, big secret between him and Daddy and he mustn’t say anything about this, ever again.”              Henry sat back. “And I told him all of this because I was scared of Sebastian telling the truth, and of my family breaking up entirely, because-”

Henry gazed directly at the darkness of his friend’s face, and went on. “Imagine, Joe. Imagine if my son went to his mom and his grandparents and his teachers and his friends and said, “I am a murderer, help me, I killed my own brother.” That would have been us finished. For ever. We couldn’t have survived that as well as the actual murder. No way. No fucking way.”

Henry looked out the window into the night.

At last, Joe spoke: “So you sowed the confusion in his head, telling him he was Barry, as well as Sebastian. And now, he thinks he is Barry, because of what you said.”

“Yes. I calmed him down at the time, which is all I wanted, it did the job, but then the confusion in his head re-emerged. In the most appalling way. As him thinking he is Barry.”

“But he really is Sebastian?”

“Yes.”

“What about the screaming thing?”

“Just a scream. Doesn’t prove anything.”

“The dog? You told me about the dog.”

“Pets reattach themselves to surviving twins in different ways, they try to protect them. Also I wonder if the dog saw something. Sensed something. He was with the twins when it happened. And he’s never been the same, I know that sounds insane, but it all sounds insane.”

“So Barry really is still Sebastian.”

“Yes.”

“And you know this?” Joe shook his head, again, in the dimness. “You know it’s a lie. You know he is really Sebastian. Yet you go along with this charade, this pretence? You even let Nora plan a _funeral_ for Sebastian?” His voice was sharpening, in the cold clear air. “Really, Henry? It’s just so fucked up. How could you _do_ this?”

“Because I have no choice! I can’t tell the truth to anyone – you’re the only one that knows. If I told Nora, she’d probably crack up – would that help? She might hate her surviving son. And also, why not let Barry live, if this keeps the peace? Let his mom have her favourite back. For now.” Henry sighed, fiercely, and went on, “And you know what? Sometimes these days I actually think of him as Barry, as if he really is Barry, I _forget_. And he _does_ act like Barry; it happens in twins who survive a co-twin’s death. The point is: what does it matter, as long as the truth doesn’t come out, that maybe, probably, one of my sons killed the other?”

“But Sebastian is still here. Still here now. Still inside Barry.”

“Yes.”

“Stuck inside Barry. Fighting to be heard.”

“Yes.”

“Jesus,” said Joe. “What a total fucking mess.”

Henry nodded, feeling a certain exhaustion. But also a certain relief. He had shared, and yes, it felt better. But the other problems remained; the deeper truths were concealed: his own guilt; _Nora’s_ involvement; _Nora’s_ responsibility. Stuff they couldn’t tell anyone.

The lighthouse flickered across the prison yard, quite far away from them. Henry thought of his diminished and broken family, out there, at Queen Square. His yearning for revenge had not gone away. His child had died.

And the injustice burned.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as you all know, it's the middle of Season 3 while I'm updating this- if you're seeing this later, then awesome! But I originally wrote this fic with the intention of finishing it and editing it in summer 2016. But I got randomly busy halfway through the summer (seriously! My mom surprised me with a trip to Europe.) But I finished it in November, and decided last minute to write in a part for Julian that I think you'll really like!

It was Friday with a rumour of snow in the air when Nora went to Eastside Elementary School to pick up Barry. She was desperate to help her son, now. _He needs friends, or he will be lost._ He needed some reason to hope, to see a future here; he needed people to talk to who weren't ghosts.

Nora looked beyond the blocky buildings to the waters of the Sound: the grey waves were choppy because of the wind, everything was harsh, raw and sombre, making the gaily painted swings and wooden riding animals in the playground look totally incongruous: surreal invaders from a fatuously happy world.

A young, dark-skinned woman was standing on her own at the gates, staring at the glass door of the school, and the cheerful signs saying Main Entrance in both French and English. Nora recognized this woman; Barry had been pointing her out to her as being ‘Julian’s mom’: Cass Albert.

Julian Albert was a blow-in, a British boy at Eastside, and he seemed to be the only other child with whom Barry might just have connected. He was, at least, the only child Barry had mentioned more than once by name, whenever Nora had carefully, anxiously and pretend-casually quizzed her son; “Hey, how did it go today at school?”

Nora had no real idea if Julian even liked Barry; probably, he didn’t. Nora was fairly certain none of the children at Eastside truly liked or even knew her son: they found him uncanny, and unsettling.

But Nora had no alternatives now, and so she gripped her shyness and hid it somewhere inside her, and she approached Cass Albert with her nice purple coat and her tall boots. Her slender face creased with a frown, even before Nora spoke.

“Hello, I’m Nora Allen.”

“Yes, hello.” British.

“Barry Allen’s mother.”

“Of course. Sorry. Yes.” British.

“I was just wondering, would your son like to come on a play date tomorrow? We live in Queen Square, one of the nicer highrises? Over by the business district, it would only be for about four hours starting maybe eleven a.m. – we’ll come and pick him up?”

“Well …”

She looked startled. Who could blame her? But Nora had to persist. She couldn’t let Barry’s increasingly crazy loneliness go on. She must be rude, and aggressive: a horrible, pushy parent.

“You see, Barry is a bit lonely to be honest so we’d really like it if Julian would come and play with him for a day, is eleven a.m. OK? You’ve not got anything planned? We’ll do everything, that would be great.”

“Well ... we had ... I mean …"

She clearly wanted to say no, but she was wavering, because Nora was hardly giving her any choice. She felt sorry for this poor woman. Confronted by her. But she needed to seal the deal- so she used it.

“Of course, Barry’s still deeply confused after his brother’s accident. You  probably know what happened, his brother died, his twin, so he’s – just – just finding it difficult to fit in, and it would be so lovely for him to play with Julian?”

What could Cass Albert say now?

_Oh, I don’t care that your son has lost a brother? I don’t care that you are a grieving mother of a difficult and lonely child?_

Nora could _see_ the resistance crumbling in her expression: she was embarrassed for her, she was probably pitying her – and so what? Just as long as she agreed.

“OK,” she said, forcing an unreal smile. “And I have your mobile in the directory? I’ll text you our address.”

“Yes. That’s great.” Nora returned an equally phoney smile, watching Cass Albert pull out her cell. “Barry will be so happy. Henry, my husband, will come and pick him up at eleven and we’ll drop him off at three. That’s great – thanks!”

With that, they both turned and looked to the glass door as the children were released from school: as always, Barry was the last, reluctant child to emerge from the door, when all his shouting, smiling classmates had dispersed.

Nora scrutinized him as he walked towards her. At least the scarring on his hands wasn’t too bad.

And now, Nora grimaced, inwardly, at her own thoughts. That was the extent of her optimism, this was her looking on the bright side: _at least the scarring wasn’t too bad._

_“_ Hello, you.”

Nora put an arm around him, guiding him to the car.

“Hey. How did it go at school?”

“Nothing.”

“Sorry?”

“Can we go home, Mommy?”

“OK. Sure.”

Nora turned the key and they drove away.

“I’ve got some nice news for you, Barry.”

Nora looked in the rear-view mirror. Barry looked back at her. Hopeful, yet sceptical. Nora’s pity grew, and she hesitated. Then, she said,

“Julian is coming to play, with you, tomorrow.”

Barry was silent as he absorbed this news. He gazed at Nora, mirror-wise. He blinked, once, and twice.

And now, Nora could see the softness of sad hope in his wide green eyes. The silence went on, as he dwelled on this thought.

Nora knew that weekends in the city were achingly lonely for Barry, worse even  than the loneliness of school; however desolated he might be in his isolation on the playground, he was still surrounded by kids and he listened to lessons and at least the _teachers_ engaged with him.

In their apartment, and while they went out occasionally, it was just Nora. And Henry. And the sky and the clouds and the windows and the flickering lights at night in the buildings adjacent. Nora still loved Central City – or, at least, she _wanted_ them to love the city, despite its pains – so she wanted Barry to love it, too. And for that, he needed company. In that apartment building.

So Nora hoped and believed he would be pleased by this news: the weekend play date.

At last, he said: “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Someone’s coming to play with me? Play with me?”

“Yes, really. With you. Her mommy asked me just now if Julian could come. Won’t that be fun?”

Nora’s son gazed, and then he bursts into a big, bright, hopeful smile. The biggest smile Nora had seen on his face for many weeks. Maybe many months. Then he tried to hide the smile: he was _embarrassed_ by how pleased he was. And Nora was delighted by his smile. And she was terrified. _What if this goes wrong? He now has huge expectations. But I have to do it._

Nora tried to rein in his excitement, but it was not easy. Throughout supper, he kept asking her _what time is Julian coming_ , and if he could come earlier – and this made Henry irritable. But Henry was irritable, or distant, all the time now. His moods were beginning to resemble the view of Central City in a rainstorm: Nora could _still_ see him, when he was with them, he was right there. But the details were blurred.

Since that thing in the S.T.A.R. Labs banquet hall, Henry and Nora had moved farther apart. Nora didn’t know what he was truly thinking any more. And he clearly didn’t know what Nora was truly thinking any more. When they watched television or talked at the dinner table, they did it with signals and monosyllables. As if they were not fluent in the same language.

Maybe was because they had endured too much pain – but they had endured it  differently, individually – and now, they were separated. Maybe it was because he rather scared Nora, now, with his barely concealed anger – at the world, at the city, at life, and maybe at her. The strange thing is that Nora still desired him. Even as everything else in their relationship seemed fractured and misshapen. Maybe there was some hope there.

But Nora didn’t have the energy to fix their relationship now. Her thought were focused on her son.

Eventually at nine, Nora put Barry to bed and she was so exhausted by his questions and chatter, Nora go to bed myself, soon after.

At seven-thirty a.m. Barry was shaking her awake, standing in the cold bedroom in his pajamas, his face flushed and excited.

“Mommy, Mommy. Where’s Julian?”

Nora groaned from sleep. Henry remained unconscious, on the other side of the bed.

“Sorry?”

“Julian! Where is he? My new friend. Mommy, you said he was coming!”

Nora swung her legs from the bed, and yawned till her jaw cracked.

“Mommy?”

“He’s coming, darling. But not yet.”

“When _is_ he coming, Mommy? When?”

“Oh, God, soon, Bear, soon. Let’s make you some breakfast.”

Slipping on her dressing gown, Nora walked into the kitchen and thought about the day and the Big Play Date. And abruptly, she realized that, even though she did not believe in God, she was _actually_ praying.

_Please, God, make this work. Please, God, I will believe in You if You make this work._

And now, Julian was here.

It was half past eleven and Nora was standing at the kitchen door. Henry opened the apartment door from the outside, and there was someone with him. Julian Albert.                  Even from the slight distance, Nora could see the wariness in the little boy, in his posture. Barry didn’t go in the car because he wanted to welcome Julian to his house, in his house.

Barry and Nora walked to greet Julian Albert. Nora’s son was jumping up and down in his socks. The day outside was clammy and misty, but at least it wasn’t particularly cold outside: perhaps, if they got bored of being inside, Nora could take them to explore the park a few streets away. They could touch the fossils in the stones, they would play in the snow on the field…

Nora said, “Hello, Julian!”

The small blonde-haired boy in glasses gave Nora a shy, uncertain glance as Henry hung up his coat. By her side, Barry was staring at Julian as if Julian were a celebrity. Barry was amazed, wondrous, dazzled, an actual new friend! Come to his house!

“Barry, say hello to Julian.”

“Hello-Julian-thank-you-for-coming-thank-you!” Nora’s son said, all at once, and then he rushed forward and he hugged Julian and this was obviously too much and too gauche, for Julian Albert, because he actively pushed Barry away, with a scowl.             Quickly, Nora intervened, and separated the boys, and she took them both by the hand, and then she said, brightly, “OK, shall we have some orange juice? Some cookies? Then, Barry, you can show Julian all your toys!”

“Yes yes!” said Barry, bouncing up and down. “Julian, do you want to see all our toys?” Nora nearly sighed. He was getting so good at singular possessives.

Julian shrugged, unsmiling, as they walked to the kitchen. Then, he said, in a crisp and clear English accent, “All right.”

Nora felt serious sympathy for little Julian: this boy wasn’t being cruel or cold, he simply didn’t know Nora’s son, he had been forced into this play date. But Nora couldn’t let this stop her. She just hoped Barry’s inner niceness, and bashful charm – the charm of her lovely, sweet son, so delicate and funny when you got to know him – would do the hard work, and form a bond.

Henry offered Nora a stare as he passed into the hall; as if this play date was going to be Nora’s fault if it didn’t succeed. Ignoring this, Nora gave the boys their cookies and juice, and, after a brief consideration, buttoned up their coats, so she could bring them up to the rooftop garden Queen Square had to play; she was trying to sound as affable and relaxed and _we-do-this-all-the-time-ish_ as possible. They didn’t go to the park often, but Barry was more excited about this new friend.

“Thank you, Mommy, thank you, Mommy!”

Barry was trembling with happiness as Nora did up his coat: he was so _thrilled_ by the thought of his new playmate. In contrast, Julian stood there, mute and resentful, but trying to be as polite as a seven-year-old can, which was: not very polite. He mumbled a minor _thanks_ for the food and drink, and he slowly followed Nora’s unusually noisy son out of the apartment door.

“C’mon, Julian, it’s on the rooftop and everything and we have flowers and bugs and Jett, our dog, can I show you? Can I?”

It was painful to hear Barry’s supplications, his neediness. So Nora led them up to the elevator and Barry let Julian push the button, and Nora meditated on her hopes, wishing them away. She must not expect too much.

Henry hovered in the hallway; pecked Nora on the cheek; his stubble was prickly, not sexy. He said, “I’ve got to see Martin, then go to Keystone in the morning. Big thing. Might stay overnight.” Lies.

“OK.”

“But I’ll be back to go and drop off Julian.”

“OK.”

“About three.”

Again, Nora noted how their conversation was reduced to this: _Where you are going, Why am I going, Who gets the car, Who will buy food tonight._ Maybe it was because they were scared of talking about the bigger things: what was happening to Barry. Maybe they just hoped that if they didn’t talk about it, the problem would melt away, like the drifts of snow on the sidewalk down on the street.

He left them by the elevator, and Nora rode up to the freshening air and trudged up to the rooftop garden. It really was beautiful. Communal, handled by most of the residents, spacious, green, and the best view of Central City, Nora believed, that was available.

Since it was so large, she busied herself by pretending that she was _not_ looking for Barry and Julian, but she was. She wanted to be a non-interfering mother who could let her happy son run free, safe, with his friend, but she was also the anxious mother of a friendless son and she was shredded with worries.

Nora could hear the whistling of the wind that was common on a rooftop. Unthought phobias brought their way back to the surface, but she tried her best to push them down. For a moment, she stood watched Jett, sitting on a rock, near the dead flowers of winter. He was sunning himself in the rare brightness, and melted snow. He let out a lonely yawn.

Barry.

He was there standing on the roof by the railing. Her son was staring at the still moving clouds up by the observation area.

He was alone. Where was Julian?

_I have to intervene._

Zipping up her windbreaker, she strolled, casually, down the grass path, to the concrete area with chairs.

“Barry, where’s your new friend?”

Nora’s voice was absurdly calm.

Barry now had his hands on the railing, his body pressed up against it. His head was tilted not downwards, but straight ahead. His hood was down.

“Barry?”

He looked up, with an expression halfway between guilt and sadness.

“Julian didn’t want to play what I wanted to play, Mommy. He wanted to go look at the big tower, that is boring isn’t it? So I came here.”

Nora could sense the panic of isolation in this statement. It had been so long, Barry had forgotten how to socialize, to share, how to be a friend.

“Barry, you can’t always do what you want to do. Sometimes you have to do what your friends want to do. Where is he?”

Silence.

“Where is he?”

The first strain of anxiety tightened in her throat.

"Sweetie, where is Julian?”

“Told you! Over there.” He stamped his foot. Pretend-angry. But Nora could see the hope, and the hurt, in his eyes.

“OK then, let’s go and find him, I’m sure we can find something you both want to do.”

Nora took her dismayed son by the hand and led him onto the path – and together, they marched, lockstep, to the other corner, and there was Julian Albert, looking utterly fed up, and bored, and cold, his hands in his pockets, standing by the railing.

 “Mrs Allen, can I go home now?” he said. Flatly. “I want to see my friends from school this afternoon.”

Nora glanced, immediately, at her son.

Barry looked openly anguished, and hurt, by this inadvertently cruel remark. Tears were not far from his green eyes.

Yet Julian was, of course, simply being truthful: Barry was _not_ one of Julian’s friends, and probably never would be.

Somehow, she suppressed her maternal anger. The urge to protect Barry. Because she was determined to give it another shot. “Hey, boys, why don’t we play skipping rocks down at the pier? That sounds fun. It’s just across the street from our building. Look, down there.”

Julian pouted. “But I want to go home.”

“Not yet, Julian, not quite yet – very soon. But we can have some fun first, we can go to the shore!”

This was one of Barry’s favoured games: skimming rocks over the flat stretch of water around the corner, where the waves were harboured by the basalt and granite blocks. He liked to play this game with Henry.

Julian sighed heavily, and Barry said, “Please come, Julian. We can play this, I can show you. Please let me show you?”

“Oh, all right then.”

Together, they painstakingly made their down in the elevator, across the street to the shore, to the basalt blocks, and the flat stretch of beach. They had to clamber over kelp, and step onto crusts of decaying seaweed. Julian wrinkled his nose.

When they reached the tiny beach, Barry picked up a round stone and he showed it to Julian.

“See, you have to get a round one and then throw it kind of like a sideways thing?”

Julian nodded. Clearly uninterested. Barry leaned back and skimmed a stone and it did three little cheery bounces and then he said: “Your turn. Your turn! Julian!”

Julian did not move. Barry tried again. “Let me find you a stone, Julian. Can I find you a stone to throw?”

Nora watched on, helpless. Diligently, Barry searched the shingled little beach for a nice flat round stone, and he handed it to Julian, who took it, and looked at Nora, and at the Sound – and then he listlessly threw the stone; it did a half-hearted plop into the water. Then, Julian shoves his hands in his pockets.

Barry gazed at Julian in despair. Nora didn’t know whether to intervene, or how to intervene. At last, Nora’s son said: “Imagine if everyone in the world wanted to line up to see a caterpillar?”

Julian said nothing. Nora’s son went on, “Imagine that, imagine if they did, you’d have to have a big café, but there’d be no one to give them food coz they’d all be lining up!”

It was one of Barry’s flights of fancy, his nonsense concepts: the ones he used to exchange with Sebastian, when they’d whoop with laughter, spiralling into ever dizzier realms of absurdity.

Julian shook his head and shrugged at Barry’s idea and then he looked at Nora and said: “Can I go home now?”

It wasn’t Julian Albert’s fault, but Nora seriously wanted to slap him.  
  
She was about to give up, to call Henry and say _come and collect,_ or maybe Nora would just drag Julian on foot over the highway and mudflats at low tide by himself; which happened in less than an hour: one p.m. But then, Barry said, “Julian, do you want to play Minecraft on the big phone?”

And this changed things. Julian Albert actually looked curious. The big phone was the iPad. Which Nora and Henry bought when we had more money to buy things like that.

“It’s an iPad,” Nora said to Julian. “Got lots of games!”

Julian Albert frowned. But it was a different frown, a good frown, a frown of confusion – and interest.

“Daddy won’t let us uh play any computer games or stuff like that,” He said. “He says they are bad for us. But can I play them here?”

“YES!” Nora said. “Of course you can, sweetheart.” She was beyond worrying as to whether this would annoy the Alberts. She just needed to rescue the day. “Come on, boys, let’s go inside and you can play on the iPad and I’ll make some lunch! How about that?”

This worked. Julian Albert looked properly enthused – even keen. Consequently, the three of them climbed back up the rocks and they ride up the elevator bouncing and Nora settled them both in the living room, where the iPad was glowing. Julian actually giggled as he booted up one of the games. Barry showed him how to do the first level of his favourite game: how to stop Angry Granny from running into a sheet of glass.

The boys looked at each other – and they smiled – and they giggled together, like friends, like brothers, like Barry and Sebastian used to do, and Nora made another little prayer of thanks and gently, tentatively, hopefully stepped outside the living room and went into the kitchen. She wanted to make pasta and meat sauce.

_All kids like pasta and meat sauce._

Nora could still hear them laughing and chattering in the living room. The relief was intense. This was not what she’d intended, what she had idealized. It was not two girls scampering around the lovely rooftop, looking at flowers, pointing at harbour people walking below, it was two kids hunched over an iPad, indoors. It could be in Surrey. It could be anywhere. But it would very definitely do. Because it could be the beginning of something better.

The minutes passed in relief and reverie. Nora sieved the penne, carefully made the sauce, and stared at the building adjacent, and the office across, through the kitchen window. The beauty of Central City was subdued today, but still impressive. It was always impressive. The fine pale greys of sea and sky. The rich steel of the high-rises and buildings upon buildings. The trumpeting of the geese flying outside.

The sound of a boy screaming.

What?

It was Julian. And he was shrieking.

Desperately.

Nora stood, still, quite stuck. Rigid with fearfulness. Paralysed by a desire not to know what was happening.

_Not again. Not here. Please no._

Reflex took over and Nora ran into the living room, and it was empty, but then she heard the scream again – and it was coming from their bedroom, Henry’s and her’s, with the big bed, so she stepped into this room: and Julian was standing in a corner sobbing, frantically. And pointing at Barry.

“Him! Him! Him!”

Barry was sitting on the bed and he was also crying, but in a different way. Helpless. Silent. Those silent tears that freaked Nora out.

“Boys. What is it?! What’s happened?!”

Julian screamed like an animal, he ran from the room, right past Nora, she tried to grab him but he was too fast. _What do I do? It’s an apartment. I can’t let him run off and reach the elevator, he could go anywhere_ , _not in this hysterical state, anything might happen._ So Nora pursued Julian into the kitchen where she corner him and he stood by the fridge, shivering, trembling, sobbing, and then screaming again.

“Him! It was him! Him talking! Him! In the mirror! In the mirror!”

“Julian, please, calm down, it’s just-” Nora didn’t know what to say.

Julian screamed in her face, “Take me home. Take me home! I want my mommy! Take me home!”

“Mommy …"

Nora turned.

Barry was in the kitchen door, his face streaked with misery. Standing in his blue socks and his little jeans.

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” he said. “I just ... I just said that Sebastian wanted to play too. That’s all.”

This provoked even louder shrieks from Julian: he looked terrified of Nora’s son, he was hunched, backing away.

“Take me home! Pleeeeese, please get it away, get it away from me, get it away!  _Get them away from me!_ ”


	19. Chapter 19

Henry arrived back quickly. Twenty-five minutes after Nora phoned him – he was in Keystone, he appeared at the door.

Nora had calmed down Julian Albert, in the meantime. He was still trembling, but the tears had stopped. She’d given him cocoa and cookies and she had kept him away from Barry.

_I have to keep other children away from my own son._

Barry was hunched on the sofa in the living room, pretending to read a book; he looked terminally lonely – and guilty, too: as if he had failed at something very important.

And the worst of it was: he had.

Nora could not see now how he would ever make friends with anyone at Eastside. Whatever he did to freak out Julian – Talk his twin language? Pretend to interact with Sebastian? Julian would tell _everyone_ at the school and all the children would listen to him and Barry will become, even more, the strange kid. The spooky, lonely boy. With the voices in his head.

And the Alberts would _loathe_ Nora, in so many ways: for making their son play computer games, for making their son miserable and terrified.

They were doomed. Maybe it was a tragic error, moving here.

“Where is he?” said Henry, as he pushed into the kitchen and looked at Julian, standing at the furthest corner of the kitchen. “Where is Barry?”

Nora whispered back. “He’s in the living room, he’s OK, considering.”

“Hm.” He was glaring at her. The play date had failed, catastrophically, and this was her fault. She arranged this, and it had gone horribly wrong.

“Please, Henry, just take Julian home.”

“I will.”

He went over to Julian and, quite bluntly, seized him by the hand and lead him out into the dying sunny afternoon. Nora give him Julian’s bag with his toy inside. The two of them traipsed down the hallway and enter the elevator; Nora turned in despair, and went back into the apartment.

_It’s just me and Barry_ _. Alone. Here._

Nora peered her head around the door of the living room – he was still reading, but not really reading.

"Sweetie."      

He didn’t even look at her. His white face was streaked by tears. The apartment was so quiet. Just the hymning of the wind, the slight buzzing that you could hear if you _really_ listened because they were so hight up and the television, switched on to a kid programme. Nora wished they were back in Surrey. She couldn’t believe she wanted this, but she thought she did.

_Yet we can’t go back. We are trapped here. In our lease._

The night passed in frightened quietness, Sunday was listless and subdued; Barry loitered in his room. Nora sensed that if she tried to console him, she might make things worse. _But what else should I do?_ Henry was no help: by Monday morning, he was barely speaking to her: there was rage in his movements, he could not hide it. He clenched his fist at the breakfast table. It seemed as if he was inches from punching her.

And Nora was beginning to feel genuine fear of this anger: the repressed violence it implied. Henry, after all, hit his boss. And Henry’s drunken dad beat Henry’s mom half to death. Was Henry that different? He certainly drank, and he was angry all the time. She didn’t think he would ever touch Barry, but Nora no longer felt entirely safe with him next to her. So close.

He got up, wordless, and ferried his breakfast dishes to the sink. And then Nora shrugged, and she let him take Barry to school. Because she could not face the moms and dads at the gate; _especially_ not Julian Albert’s mom. Barry was also silent. Everyone had been silenced.

When Nora was properly alone, she took the phone off the hook. The first think she did was call her boss to let them know that she was taking a sick day. She wanted to be undisturbed, she wanted time to think.

Then, she went back to the bedroom and lay there, for five or six bleak, silent hours, staring at the ceiling. She considered her mother’s words. About Sebastian’s strange behaviour just before the murder. The way Henry was delayed that night.

There was some pattern here. What was it? Nora felt as if she were staring at one of those 3D puzzle-pictures and she had to let her eyes relax, and the reality would come into view.

Resting her face piously on her hands, Nora’s eyes slowly unfocused, and she gazed vacantly across the room. Then, she realized she was staring at Angus’s cherished chest of drawers. One of those items of furniture that _had_ to come here from Surrey.

It had been his since before they were married. A present from his grandmother: an old Victorian ‘kist’. The drawers were lockable. And he kept them locked.

But Nora knew where he stored the key. She’d seen him casually reach for it, half a dozen times; after all, they’d been married ten years. You see things in ten years. He probably didn’t know that she knew, but Nora knew.

Crossing the room, Nora reached behind the kist: and there it was. Lodged in a slot, at the back of the chest.

Nora paused. _What am I doing?_

The key slotted in the first lock, and turned with antique and well-oiled ease. Nora grasped the brass handles, and pulled the top drawer out. The apartment was very cold. She could see geese swooping on the Central City winds, calling in that annoying way – needy, yet critical.

The drawer was full of documents. Career stuff.

The next drawer unlocked, and slid out. This looked more promising; though she was not sure what the promise might be. There were letters and books. She lifted one letter up to see, properly, in the aging afternoon light.

The letter was from his grandmother.

_My darling Angus,_

_I’m writing from our holiday to tell you there are a pair of otters breeding! You must come and see them, they play all day by the lighthouse beach, it’s lovely to—_

Nora felt the sense of wrongness, as she read this. _What am I doing?_ _Sleuthing my husband?_ Yet she didn’t trust him, because he’d told too many shifting lies: about the toy, about the identity change. She was also increasingly scared of him. So she wanted to know. She wanted to understand the pattern. Dropping the letter, she reached for another.

A noise stiffened the air. That was a definite creak in the floorboards. Was that Henry coming back? So early? It was nearly three p.m.

The creak repeated. The terror was like a cold injection, intramuscular.

Why was Sebastian frightened of Henry the day she died? Had he seen his violence? Did he slap him?

The creaking stopped. It must have been someone upstairs, walking slowly.

The relief surged and Nora plunged into the second drawer again. Letters spilled onto the floor. One was from his grandmother, again, another one was from his mom, a third from his brother, written in a bad schoolboy hand. She also found two typed letters about his dad; plus his father’s death certificate. And then– Nora’s fingers tingled with unexplained anxiety – she saw it.

A copy of _Anna Karenina._

_Anna Karenina?_

Henry was not a reader of novels. He devoured newspapers and architectural journals, he could be easily diverted by a volume of military history, like most men.

But novels? Never.

Why would he have a copy of _Anna Karenina_? And why would it be hidden?

Nora plucked it up, and flicked the first few pages. And her fingertips went cold as they rested on the third page.

There was a brief, handwritten inscription, under the title.

_For us, then ... Love, Francine_ _, xxx_

Nora knew that handwriting from old Christmas cards, and birthday cards. She’d known this handwriting for all her adult life.

It’s from Francine West.

Joe’s estranged wife.

And she’d signed it with love. To Henry. And added three kisses? To a famous novel about adultery?

_Francine West?_

Nora’s breath was a faint vapour in the freezing bedroom. She urgently wanted to search the rest of the drawer, but she couldn’t. She was halted by a noise, once again. And that sound was unmistakable.

There was someone else in the apartment. A door had slammed shut. She could hear footsteps.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some adulterous activities going on later down...if that's not your cup of tea, you can get on without it. But a lot of insight into Earth-14 Henry and Nora's relationship, here.

Was this Henry? What should she do? What if he caught Nora sneaking through his stuff? The threat of his violence was suddenly very real.

Gathering all the letters, Nora hastily shoved them in the drawer, desperate, frantic, yet trying to do this in silence. The final letter was crammed into place, and Nora turned.

Numbering her own heartbeats.

The footsteps had ceased; Nora could hear a rattle. Someone was definitely in the kitchen.

So that must be Henry?

Nora urgently needed to close the two drawers, gently, gently. The first drawer shut – but with a squeak.

Far too loud. She hesitated, wholly tensed.

The footsteps rattled, again. Was that a voice? A small, younger voice? Could Henry be with Barry?

Why would he have collected him from school early? If not Barry, then who?

Silence resumed. If they _were_ voices: they had stopped. But as Nora pushed the second drawer shut, she heard the tread of footsteps, again. They were slow. And painstaking. She got the terrifying sense that someone was stealthily crossing the floor: that whoever else was in the apartment was trying to be as quiet as possible, as they approached her. _Why?_

Now a door creaked, almost imperceptibly: and that was the dining-room door, Nora recognize the sound.

So the person, the intruder, whoever it might be – surely Henry? – was slowly approaching her, in the bedroom. Nora had to speed up: fervently she locked the middle drawer, then she went to lock the top drawer, but the key slipped through her perspiring fingers and she fumbled, desperate, flailing, on the floorboards – the room was now dark, as the winter light fell outside – so where, where was the key? She was kneeling in her jeans in the dust like a burglar, _this is pathetic, and wrong. But I must find the key._

Here. Biting back her panic, Nora locked the top drawer, slipped the key in its hiding place and then, stood up, turned around, and smoothed down her shirt and tried to look normal as the footsteps came right to the doorway, and the bedroom door swung slowly open.

Nothing.

Nora stared at the empty rectangle, that gave on to the hall. The painting of the harlequin stared down at her. In the silence.

“Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello??”

Silence like a howl, like a shriek. Nora’s heart was the noisiest thing in the house. Thumping. Who was in the apartment, and how were they playing this game? Why would they want to scare Nora? She definitely heard footsteps, this was no illusion. Someone was in here.

“Hello? Who is it? Who is there? Who is it?”

Nothing.

“Stop this! Henry? Barry? Stop it.”

The darkness intensified; the wintry afternoon light faded so quickly on cloudy days. Why didn’t she turn on the lights before she began? The apartment building was shrouded. The Sound breathed in and out, exhausted. Very slowly Nora walked to the door, and peered out. The hall waited for her. Empty. She could see the shapes of furniture in the living room. The light was so murky. And it was so unbelievably cold.

She realized she was shivering.

This was odd- this darkness. It was only three p.m.

She leaned and switched on the bedroom light, but it was feeble, sixty watts. Not much better than a yellow moon.

_“The sun goes down,”_

It was a boy’s voice. Coming from Barry’s bedroom.

_“The stars come out-”_

But it was Sebastian’s voice. Because Nora knew that tune: it was Sebastian’s favourite song. By _The Wanted_ , it was usually on the twins’ little radio. Sebastian’s voice was muffled and distant, yet lilting and happy. He was singing very under tempo.

" _My universe will never be the same, I’m glad you came…”_

Nora gripped herself. It could not be Sebastian, of course. He was dead.

So this must be Barry, in his room, pretending to be Sebastian. But how did he get in his room? Why was he here? Did Henry bring him back early? Why was he singing like Sebastian?

“Barry! Barry!” Nora was running to the bedroom, the door was shut; she pressed the door, and turned the knob, and she painfully hesitated at the last moment – filled with the obscene fear that she was going to see Sebastian in here. In his blue sweater. Buoyant, joking, bouncy. Alive. Or maybe he would be broken on the bed, bleeding and dying, as he was on Granville, after the fall.

A blooded body, singing.

Nora’s daydreams were nightmares.

Taking a hold of herself, Nora pushed open the door and she scanned the room and there was Barry, in his school uniform, under his thick coat, staring sadly out of the window, at the Sound, and the coast down to Yaletown, gathering its darkness, under the starless sky. His room was weirdly cold.

“But, Barry, darling – why?”

He turned and smiled sadly at Nora. His school uniform was still too big, he looked lonely as Nora had ever seen him; her heart throbbed with sympathy.

“Were you singing?”

“Sebastian was singing,” he said, simply. “Like he used to. I was listening and playing. He’s gone now.”

Nora ignored this announcement. Because she couldn’t bear the implications. _My son really is going mad._

So she asked questions, instead.

“What are you doing here? Barry?” Nora looked at her watch, it was only three p.m.: his school would only just be emptying. “Bear? Bear-ry? What happened? How did— I don’t— Why?”

“It was me. I brought him over.”

Henry’s deep tenor broke the spell. He was standing in the doorway, tall and looming.

“I got a call from the school.” Nora’s husband eyed her, significantly. His brown V-neck jumper was dusty. “Called me about Barry. Wanted me to pick him up.” He looked around Barry’s spartan bedroom, the cuddly toy giraffe toppled on the bed, the _Where the Wild Things Are_ book on the floor.

“Christ,” he says. “Why is it so cold in here? We have to fix the heating.”

He was frowning at Nora, in a meaningful way. She gave Barry a little hug and he smiled blankly, again, and then Henry and Nora, the caring parents, stepped outside. They closed the door and they were standing next to each other, in the hall, and she felt as if she wanted to back away from him, he was too near, too tall, too male.

Henry said, “The school secretary called me, they couldn’t reach you, they said Barry was very unhappy. Totally freaking. Because Julian Albert refused to sit in the same class as him, and then lots of other kids did the same. They asked me to pick him up early.”

“But, why—”

 “They want us to keep him out of school for a week.” He sighed, in a firm way; and rubbed his stubbled chin. He looked older. Tired. His blue eyes searched Nora’s. “I’ve tried to get him to talk about it. But you know what he’s like, Barry, he can be so bloody silent.” He paused, just enough to insult.

Nora wanted to hit him. She hadn’t forgotten the book.

_Francine West?_

But her overriding thought was Barry.

“Why a week? What’s going to happen then?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. They just said they want things to calm down. Anyway, I picked him up and brought him home.”

“Did you sneak into the apartment – I just – you gave me the fright—”

“Didn’t realize anyone was here, to be honest. Lights were all out.”

He was lying. Again. Nora knew it.

_He is lying._

His eyes fixed on hers. Maybe he knew Nora was looking in the chest. And perhaps he knew that she found the book, and he didn’t care. But what about Barry? What must _he_ be feeling now?

“I have to talk to him.”

“No, I’m not sure that-”

Pushing his big, controlling hand away, Nora creaked open Barry’s door. He was sitting on his bed, his eyes glassy, reading the _Where the Wild Things Are_ book again. As he used to do, years back. But with Sebastian. It must be like comfort food. He wanted something reassuring. Nora wished his room had more light; and more heat. This cold was abominable.

“Barry, what happened at school?”

He stayed quiet, reading.

“Darling, I need to know if anyone did anything bad to you.”

Only the wind outside was talking, whispering to the geese and the sky.

“Barry …" Nora sat down on the side of the bed, and stroked his arm. “Bear. Please talk to me.”

“Nothing.”

There it was. Again. The discernible voice of his mother.

“Bear, please-”

“Nothing.” His face lifted and his eyes burned. “Nothing! Nothing happened!”

Nora stroked his arm again, but he reacted with greater fury.

“Go away!”

Barry was screaming at her. His pale, cute face was pink with anger, and scrunched with loathing. “Go away, I hate you, I hate you—”

“Barry-”

Nora reached out another hand, but Barry slapped it, hard, much harder than Nora knew he could: the pain was quite stinging.

“GO AWAYYYYYY!”

“OK.” Nora stood. “OK.”

“GO AWAYYYY!”

“OK, I’m going.”

And Nora was, she was retreating. Pitiful and defeated, the worst of mothers. She went to the door, opened it, and shut it behind her, leaving her son alone in his room. Nora could hear him sobbing like the sea, keening like the geese outside; there was nothing she could do.

Nora looked at the door, it said _Barry Lives HERE and Keep Out_ in silver, spangled letters. Nora resisted the urge for tears. What was her crying going to do? How could her emotions help? A deep, quiet voice intruded.

“I heard.”

Henry was standing three yards down the hall, at the open door to the living room. Nora could hear some show on television, and see warming lights.

“Hey.”

His arms were open. He wanted to hug her. Nora wanted to slap him. Very hard. And yet, a part of her wanted his hugs.

Because she still wanted sex.

If anything, she wanted sex more. She did. She thought this was probably jealousy sex. It’s that book signed by Francine. It had made her jealous, but more desirous. She wanted to possess him, mark him, prove that he was still hers.

_I also just want sex,_ Nora thought, _We never have enough._

He approached.

“There’s nothing we can do, you’re doing your best.” He came closer, still. “He’s confused, of course. But he will get better. He will. But maybe he needs help. Maybe we all need help. Perhaps you ought to speak to Ronnie’s wife, again, the one at S.T.A.R. Caitlin?”

His hand was reaching for Nora’s, she could see that he wanted it as well.

Softening her gaze, Nora opened her lips, and she lifted her face to his; and he sunk his mouth onto hers. And they were kissing as they had not kissed in a month. Perhaps three months.

And suddenly, they were stripping. Feverishly. Teenager-ish-ly. Nora ripped his sweater up, and off; he was unbuttoning the studs of her jeans. They toppled, giddily, into the living room, he was picking her up, carrying her, and Nora wanted to be carried.

_Just do it, Henry Allen. Fuck me._

He fucked her. This was good. This is what Nora wanted. Him taking her, like it was, like they used to. Nora didn’t want foreplay, she didn’t want fooling around; she wanted him inside her, resolving any doubts, just for a few minutes.

His kisses were strong and deep. He bit Nora’s shoulder as he turned her over, and fucked her again; she grasped at the pillows. Listening to him kissing her, biting her.

“I love you, Nora.”

“Fuck you-”

“Nora.”

She gasped into the pillow. “Harder.”

“Ah.”

He had a hand around her neck, pressing her head into the pillow, as if he was going to break it, with one snap, Nora looked around, and she could see the angry glitter in his eyes; so she pushed up, and pushed back, pushed him out of her; she turned over. She was hot and shining with sweat, and bruised, and ready to come, she took his hand and put it around her slender neck again.

“Fuck me like you fucked Francine.”

He said nothing. He did not even blink. His thumb was light, yet firm on the narrowness of her throat. Her windpipe. He could press. He was strong enough. Instead he looked hard and furious into Nora’s eyes, and he rose up and pushed her back and he enters her again, and Nora said:

“Did _she_ come? Did _she_ come when you fucked her? Was it like this?”

He fucked her, his strong hand on her white neck, and she imagined him fucking her, fucking her best friend’s wife, and Nora wanted to hate him, and she hated him. But even as she hated him the orgasm comes, her orgasm, dizzying and irresistible.

As Nora’s own orgasm pulsed away, rippled into nothing, he came too: slumping forward, then not breathing, then breathing hard. Then receding. He slumped to Nora’s side. Two hearts beating, and the air, sky, and water outside the window.

“I never had an affair with Francine,” he said.


	21. Chapter 21

“There’s a book, in your chest of drawers. Signed by her.”

Nora and Henry were both lying back under the duvet, facing the ceiling.

The twilight had turned to darkness; the only window that could be opened was cracked to the starlit sea.

“You looked?” he said.

“It was signed. It said _Love, Francis. Kiss kiss kiss._ ”

He said nothing.

Nora turned, briefly, and glanced at him, his handsome profile, silent, and staring upwards, like one of those knights on tombs in churches, carved in stone. Then Nora lied back, too, and gazed up.

“She gave you a novel. About adultery? You never read novels. She signed it with love and kisses. Now tell me it didn’t happen. Isn’t still happening? Oh God.”

“I’m not,” he said. “Not sleeping with her. Not having an affair with her.”

And yet there was a pause here. Fatal, and revealing. He sighed, and went on: “But we did sleep together once.”

The cold breeze kicked at the half-drawn curtains.

Nora controlled herself, and asked the obvious question: “When was this, Henry? Was it _that night?_ ”

“The night of the accident?” Nora sensed him turn, toward her, across the pillow. “No, Nora. Jesus. _No!!_ Everything I said back then was true. I just stopped by, I was just coming back from work. You _have_ to believe me.”

Nora hesitated. Maybe she _did_ believe him, on this point. He sounded halfway convincing.

_But ..._

“But you said you did. With her? And… _she_ walked out on Joe. Years ago. How were you even able to find her?”

He sighed, again. “It was after the murder, Nora. You were so, you know, so wrapped in your grief – mad with grief.”

“And you _weren’t?_ ”

“No. Not saying that, course not. God. I was just as bad, I know, in my own way, all the booze. But you were untouchable. Wouldn’t let me near you.”

Nora didn’t remember this. Didn’t remember being untouchable. But Nora would let it go, for now.

“So you turned to _Francine_? My best friend’s ex-wife? For someone to _cuddle_?”

“I just needed a female friend. You were out of reach. And we were always close, Francine and me, always got on. I mean – she was there the night we met, remember?”

Nora refused to look at him. She gazed at the ceiling. She could hear a solitary bird outside. Piping and skirling. She saw now why Francine West never contacted her, never knew. She felt guilty.

“I still need to know.” Half turning. “Tell me, Henry. When you slept with her.”

He took a long breath.

"It was ... I was in pieces, maybe a month after the accident. We’d had a few bottles. We were talking. And she started ... she leaned over and she kissed me. She was the one who, y’know, did that. And yes, I responded, but ... But then I didn’t, Nora. I stopped her after the first night. I said no.”

“And the book?”

“She sent it a week after. Don’t know why.”

Nora mused. So Henry stopped her. So what? At what point did he call a halt? Did they do it all night? A weekend? Did they kiss and laugh in the morning? Did Nora care? She was less vengeful than expected; more indifferent. This was just so weak. I had gone from fearing to despising her husband. And yet even now, as Nora wanted him away from her, she wondered what she would do without him: as they were stuck in this city.

She still needed him, practically, even as she reviled him.

“Nora, I wanted a friend. To talk about the accident. Listen. Believe me. But Francine got confused. Afterwards, she was wracked with guilt. Really truly.”

“How fucking nice of her. To feel guilty. For leaving my best friend and his daughter alone, only to return years later to screw my husband.”

“I didn’t want an affair. What else can _I_ say?”

“Why did you keep the book?”

“Can’t remember. Just did. Nora, this is the truth. I never wanted anything serious and when she got romantic I said it wasn’t going to happen and since then, she and me, we’ve just been friends, and she still loves you, she really does, she feels terrible that it even got that far.”

“Must send her a thank you card. Maybe give her a book?”

He was gazing away from her, now, gazing at the Sound through the window. Nora could sense this. Corner of her eyes. He spoke,

“You seem to forget. I once forgave you.”

Her anger was instant.

“You mean _my_ so-called “affair”? Really?”

“Nora-”

“After the birth?? After you ignored me for a year, when you just pissed off and left me surrounded by diapers, by two screaming twins? Totally alone?”

“I still forgave you.”

“But that wasn’t your best friend’s wife I fucked. I fucked nobody, Henry. Did I fuck your best friend’s wife? Did I? Did _I_ fuck your best friend’s wife right after your child died?”

He was silent, and then he said,

“OK. You think this is different. I get it.”

“Well done you.”

“But please, maybe get some perspective.”

“ _What_?”

“Nothing really happened, anyway, Nora. Nothing _emotional_. So you can hate me, and you can hate Francine – but hate us for what we actually did – not what you think we did.”

“I think I’ll work out who to hate, all by myself.”

“Nora!”

Ignoring him, Nora rose from the bed and slipped on her thick woollen dressing gown. The floorboards were scratchy and cold on her bare feet. She walked to the window. The moon was high over the Sound. A cloudless night in early winter. It should have been beautiful. And it _was_ beautiful. This place was so relentlessly fucking beautiful, it never stopped. Whatever else was happening, the beauty lived on, like a terrible nightmare.

Henry made more excuses, but Nora was barely listening.

For the first time, Nora saw Henry as something truly inferior to what he was. Less masculine, less of a man, less of a husband, just so much _less_. She would probably walk out the door, right now, with Barry, if she could. But she couldn’t. She had nowhere to go: she would have to tell Joe about _everything_ , and despite she used his name so much in the argument, she was not sure he was even her best friend; her parents’ house had too many memories.

She was trapped in Central City, financially, for now. She was trapped with her adulterous husband. Maybe in time she would forgive him. Perhaps three decades would do it.

“Nora,” he said, again, like he would _never_ stop saying it. But Nora walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, because she was hungry.

She made herself toast. And sat at the dining table. Munching mechanically, fuelling herself. Staring at the telephone. Thinking about Barry.

She knew she had to call Caitlin: on that subject, Henry was quite correct. She needed to speak to Caitlin. She needed to speak to her as soon as possible. She needed her expert opinion on the strangeness. What was happening to her son? Maybe she could help with Nora’s so-called marriage. Was her lying husband still concealing something else?

Henry and Nora had one more confrontation in the evening. She was sitting in the living room, looking out at the snow. She used to like this snow sweeping up the Sound from the north. It made everything, somehow, into a sad song: liquid and soft, lyrical yet indecipherable.

Now the snow just irked her.

Henry entered the living room, a glass of Scotch in his hand. He’d been taking the dog for a walk. Jett slumped on top of the couch, chewing his favourite bone-toy, and Henry fell into the armchair.

“Jett caught a rat,” he said.

“Only three million to go then.”

He smiled, briefly, but Nora did not smile. His smile disappeared.

The TV played.

“Listen,” he said – leaning forward, annoyingly.

“I don’t want to listen.”

“Francine. And me. It was just one night. Really. Just a drunken mistake.”

“But you had sex. With Joe’s ex-wife. A month after our son died.”

“But-”

“Henry, there are no buts. You betrayed me.”

A dark flash of anger crossed his face. “I betrayed you?”

“Yes. In the worst possible way. As I was grieving.”

“Look-”

“It was a betrayal. Wasn’t it? Or would you call it something else? What would that be, Henry? How would you phrase it? “Building my support network”?”

He said nothing, though he looked as if he wanted to say a lot. The teeth were grinding in his mouth, Nora could see the muscles moving.

“Henry, I want you to sleep on the couch.”

He slugged whisky, wholesale. And shrugged. “Sure. Why the fuck not? We’ve got lots of those.” They didn’t.

“Don’t give me that self-pitying shit. Not now.”

He laughed. With deep bitterness, and gazed at Nora, directly. “Did you read all of _Anna Karenina_? You read everything you found?”

“I saw the inscription, Henry. Why? Did she put love-hearts halfway through?”

He exhaled – and shook his head. He looked very sad. He leaned and morosely tickled the ear of his much-loved dog. Nora resisted the urge to feel sorry for him.

Henry slept, as ordered, on the sofa. In the morning, Nora lay under the duvet and listened to him bath and dress, then he gathered paperwork; Nora waited for the slam of the door, indicating his departure. Then, she rose, made breakfast for Barry, got dressed, and prepared herself.

Barry was on the sofa reading _Wimpy Kid_. He was off school, of course. Until things calmed down. The idea of things ever being calm seemed pitiable in its absurdity.

Closing the door that divided the living room from the kitchen, Nora picked up the phone. She dialed Caitlin’s office – but she was not there. The floor secretary told her she was working from home this week. She wouldn’t, of course, give her Caitlin’s home number.

_Give us your number and she will call back in a few days._

But Nora was not waiting for a few days. She needed to talk to her right now. So she dialed Directory Enquiries.

_Who knows. I might get lucky, I deserve some luck._

She had a vague direct sense where Ronnie lived, an upmarket part of the business district. Henry mentioned it; he visited him there, when they hung out.

Henry. Asshole.

Nora’s call got through: she asked for a Dr C. Snow-Raymond, in Central City. How many could there be? Surely only one, with that hyphen. It just depended whether he was ex-directory.

And Nora’s luck, it seemed, paid out.

“C. Snow-Raymond, Doctor, 53 West Hastings Street; 07523920339.”

Nora scribbled the number; the phone line dropped dead.

It was a cold Tuesday afternoon in December. Caitlin could be Christmas shopping with her husband. She could be skiing. Nora had no idea.

“Hello. Caitlin Snow-Raymond?”

More luck. She was at home.

Now Nora would have to ride this luck: she just had to dive straight in.

“Hi, Dr Snow. I’m so sorry to bother you at home but it is rather urgent and – well – I’m desperate, really desperate and I need your help.”

A long, static-filled pause. Then: “Is that Mrs Allen? Nora Allen?”

“Yes!”

“I see.” Her voice-tone was mildly tetchy. “How can I help?”

Nora had already asked herself the same: how _is_ she going to help? And her answer was: by listening. Nora needed to share this frightening drama. She wanted him to listen to everything that has happened since she last saw her.

And so, like a woman on her deathbed urgently dictating her will, Nora stood by the dining-room window, and she told her everything: the scream, the tantrum with Kara Danvers, the smashed window, the fact Henry knew. The hysterical reaction from Julian Albert. The horrors of the school. Even “Glad You Came”. Nora told Caitlin _everything._

She expected her to be astonished. Maybe she was astonished. But her voice remained cool, and professorial.

“I see. Yes.”

“So what’s your advice, Dr Snow? Please tell me. We’re desperate here, Barry is breaking up, in front of me, my family is falling apart, everything is falling apart.”

“Ideally we need a consultation, a discussion of therapies, we must go over things properly, Mrs Allen.”

“Yes, but what advice can you give me now, here, right here, right now, PLEASE.”

“Please be calm.”

Nora was _not_ calm. She could hear the air, outside. What would it be like, if one day it just stopped?

Caitlin went on, “Whether your son is Barry, or Sebastian, I, of course, cannot say, if you believe that he is Barry, and he accepts that, and you’ve been through all these adjustments – then yes, it is probably best to persist with that assumption, now, whatever the truth.”

“But what do we do about the strangeness, the singing, the mirrors, the – the – the-”

“You really want my opinion now, this way? Over the phone?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. Here is one possibility. Sometimes the loss of a twin in childhood can produce in the surviving twin a kind of, ah, hatred of the parents – this is because the child implicitly trusts his parents, believing in their capacity to take care of him. So you see? When a twin dies, this parental ability to keep the child safe appears to fail,  catastrophically, and this can be perceived, by the surviving twin, as something the parent should have prevented. This is true of all siblings, but extremely true of monozygotic twins.”

“What does that mean?”

“Barry may be retreating from you because he blames you and mistrusts you. He may even be punishing you.”

“You’re saying – he could be making stuff up to scare us? To trouble us? Because he thinks we are to blame for his brother’s death?”

“Yes and no. These are just possibilities. You asked me for my opinion, and these are just that: opinions. Ideas. And ... well …"

“What?”

“We really need to talk face to face.”

“No. Please. Tell me now. What about all this stuff, stuff about reflections, and photos?”

“Mirrors are known to be extremely perplexing for twins, at any time, likewise photos, as we have already discussed. But there are other factors to consider.”

“Yes?”

“Let me look at my notes, on my computer. I made them after your last visit.”

Nora waited. She was staring out to the Sound. She was starting to hate it. She wanted a clean slate. A new break. This wasn’t it.

“Yes,” said Caitlin. “Here we are. A surviving twin may also feel guilty after the death – guilty that he was chosen to live. This much is self-evident. But this guilt is made worse if the parents seemed to have preferred the other child to live. It is all too easy for parents to idealize the dead child, especially if, in reality, they did prefer the dead child. So I have to ask, did either you or Henry have a favourite? Was there some preference for one son over another, did, for instance, her father prefer Sebastian?”

“Yes,” Nora said. Numbed.

“Then  …"  Caitlin fell uncharacteristically quiet. “In that case, we must also  look at other concerns.” She sighed. Then she went on, “Of course depression is heightened in fathers and mothers of twins compared to singletons, and this is terribly compounded if one twin dies. Especially if the parents themselves feel guilty. And then there’s, well…"

“What?”

“We know the rate of suicide is elevated in co-twins who lose a twin.”

“You’re saying Barry could kill himself?”

There was a pause. A moment where Nora looked out into the Sound. She wished it was night. Then she would be able to see the flickering lights.

“Well, it is possible. And there are other possibilities. Emma Pillsbury, the child psychiatrist, her theories are also relevant. But-”

“Sorry? Who? What?”

“No.” Her voice was firm now. “Mrs Allen, I absolutely have to stop here. Pillsbury is it. I’ve really gone as far as I can over the phone. I’m sorry. I cannot go any further, professionally, in this way. You really do need to come in to see me. Quite urgently. These things are far too delicate and complex to talk about, so casually, on the phone. Please call me when I am back at work, next Monday, and arrange a consultation, as soon as possible. Mrs Allen? Will you do that? I will clear my diary for you next week. It is imperative you come and see me very soon. And bring Barry.’

“OK, OK, yes. Thank you.”

“Very good. Now please stay calm. Keep your son calm, keep everything civil in  your domestic situation, wait until you see me. Next week.”

What was Caitlin saying? She thought Nora was panicking? – that she was losing control?

Nora was not losing control: she was angry.

Muttering a _Yes_ and a _Thanks_ , Nora put the phone down and gazed out at the Sound. Thinking hard.

So what did all that other stuff mean? Favourite kids? Preferred children? Suicide??

Nora went back into the living room. Barry was asleep on the sofa, the book had fallen from his hands. He looked exhausted, and unhappy, even in his sleep. Fetching a blanket from a cupboard, Nora lay it over him, and kissed his frowning, unconscious forehead.

His brown hair was tousled; Nora preferred his hair like this, slightly wild. It offset the formal, symmetric prettiness of his face. He and Sebastian were always handsome. Henry and Nora would revel in it. Everyone adored the lovely Allen twins. Back in the day.

As Nora watched her son, the thoughts churned in her mind. Henry and Sebastian, Henry and Sebastian.

They still had to endure Sebastian’s funeral. On Friday. He was his favourite.

 

 

 

 

 


	22. Chapter 22

“We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.”

Nora did not believe any of this. But then, she couldn’t believe reality: that she was in _another_ church having a _different_ funeral for the son who _really_ died. She could not believe her family had collapsed. That everything had turned to ashes.

The vicar intoned. Nora gazed around. Helpless now.

The church was not in Central City, it was in Surrey, where Sebastian was already buried, but under his brother’s name, half a mile down the coast from their old primary school. It was Victorian: dour and plain, with an austere nave, bare oak pews, and three tall arched windows letting in a strained, meagre sunlight.

There were about thirty people inside, locals and family gathered with the dead, sitting in the uncomfortable pews.

All the dead children.

“Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days.”

Henry told Nora – before they essentially stopped talking – that he’d had trouble finding a priest to do this job. The local reverend, or preceptor, or whatever they term him, was apparently unkeen. It was all too strange and unsettling; maybe improper. Two funerals for one dead child?

But a friendly priest from Starling City was persuaded by Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance, who had taken an unexpected interest in how the whole event played out, and this church was the obvious choice – sad, but nobly situated, looking out to the waves, staring across the graveyard.

Nora googled it, a little. It had a history of druidic worship, and violence. A previous church stood in the damp green precinct outside, but it was eroded by the wind and rain into a ruin.

Now they stood in the last, Victorian church, Nora’s mother next to Barry, just down the pew, with Henry, tall in his dark suit, between them. His tie was not quite black. It had tiny blue polka dots. Nora hated them. She hated him. Or at least, she no longer loved him. He was sleeping permanently on the sofa with Jett.

Barry was dressed entirely in black. Black suit, black socks, black shoes. Black set off his green eyes and pale skin. He seemed calm, for the moment. Unruffled. Yet the trouble was still there, a sparkle of sadness in his eyes, like the promise of snow on a clear winter’s day.

Nora’s mother had her arm draped protectively across Barry’s shoulders. Nora looked down the pew to her surviving son, to smile at him, encouragingly. But he did not notice her: he was gazing at the bible in front of him, flicking its pages with his small hands, which still showed the tiny complex scars from when he smashed the window at S.T.A.R. Labs. He was engrossed.

Barry was such a reader.

The priest continued, saying his special words:

“O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, before I go hence, and be no more seen.”

This sentence made Nora want to cry; her tears had been brimming since the service began and they were now close to breaking, to overtipping her. To trick herself into not crying, Nora picked up a copy of the same bible Barry was holding, and read what he was reading.

_Je vais sortir_ _._

The bible was in French.

Was Barry really reading this? How could he understand French? His school was bilingual but he had, of course, only been there a couple of weeks, and he was off school at the moment. Yet as Nora stared down the pew there he was: reading, absorbed, eyes flickering left to right, apparently reading French.

Perhaps he was just _pretending_ to read, perhaps like Nora, he was trying to distract himself, so he didn’t have to think about this funeral. And why not? Arguably,  he shouldn’t even be here: Nora wondered about keeping him away from the ceremony, to save him the distress; but then that seemed even more wrong than him being present: for the funeral of his twin brother.

“Lord, thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to another.”

Nora closed her eyes for a second.

“Thou turnest man to destruction; again thou sayest, Come again, ye children of men.”

How long could Nora stall the tears?

Nora saw Henry glancing across at her. Disapprovingly. He never really wanted this funeral. Yet, despite his reluctance, Nora let him organize pretty much everything to do with the service: she let Henry organize the priest, and sort out the death certificates, and notify the authorities of The Confusion. But Nora chose the liturgy. It was the same liturgy they had at Barry’s funeral – Barry who was now standing under her mother’s arm, two yards away, in this cold grey Victorian Gothic church that stared down the Sound.

The strangeness was immersive. It is as if we have all fallen into the cold deep waters of the Sound, where the eerie seaweeds danced and swayed: languid, and bewitched.

“Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice.”

_Hear my voice? Whose voice?_ Barry’s? Sebastian’s? Nora looked around the church at the congregation.

There were voices there Nora barely knew: locals she had hardly spoken to. Clarissa and Martin gathered them, she thought, to make up the numbers. They were here out of distant sympathy.

_Oh, that poor couple, with the twins, the terrible mistake, we have to go, we can have lunch at the Duisdale afterwards, they do the_ _scallops._

There was Nora’s dad at the end of the pew, in his dusty black suit, which he wore these days only for funerals. He looked old and jowly, his once dark lustrous hair was now completely white, and sparse. His watery blue eyes still had a glint, though, and when he saw Nora looking across, he gave her a weak yet hopeful smile, trying to reassure, to comfort. He also looked guilty.

That’s because Nora’s dad felt guilty about _everything_. The way he shouted at her when she was young. The way he was unfaithful to Nora’s mother and the way she stood by him nonetheless – making him feel guiltier. All that guilty drinking which damaged his career, which made him more resentful, a vicious cycle of very male frustration.

Like Henry.

And then, Nora’s dad stopped the shouting and drinking, and he retired with what little he’d kept. And he learned to make Portuguese cataplana in the big kitchen on Granville. Where his great joy was the Twins, and their many happy holidays there.

“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

Something buried deep within Nora echoed this passage, quite ardently, because in her case, it was literally true: even as her other son died, for the second time, her Barry was resurrected. Born again. And standing six feet away, reading a French bible, with scarred fingers.

Nora grasped at the railing of the pew. Keeping it together. Just keeping it together.

“Please rise.”

They were standing to sing a psalm and Nora stuttered out the words, and she looked at Clarissa across the aisle of the church, and she blushed – and gave her another one of those small, humble, you-can-get-through-it expressions; the same expression that everyone was wearing when they look at her, at Nora.

“Merciful Father, whose face the angels of thy little ones do always behold in heaven; Grant us steadfastly to believe that this thy child hath been taken into the safekeeping of thine eternal love.”

It was nearly over. Nora was making it through. Her little Sebastian, her little son, was being released. His death was acknowledged, his soul was unclutched and sent to join the clouds that rinsed the Central City.

And again, Nora didn’t believe any of this. Sebastian was probably still here. In his own way. In his twin.

The priest was stiffening his words as they approached the climax.

“O God, whose most dear Son did take little children into his arms and bless them; Give us grace, we beseech thee, to entrust the soul of this child, Sebastian Allen, to thy never failing care and love.”

Nora had a tissue in her left hand and she was crushing it, with her fist, to stop herself crying.

_Nearly done, Nora, nearly there._ She remembered this so well. There was just one more line. Everything was repeated. And everything ends.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.”

The funeral was over, the ordeal was complete.

Now, Nora was crying. As they filed out into the refined and delicate snowfall of a December day in Central City, her tears fell, unabated. The swathes of snow were sweeping down the Sound.

Veiling and unveiling. Nora saw Martin talking to Henry, Nora’s dad was holding Barry’s hand. Nora’s mother was stumbling; she wished her damn brother was here to help, but he was trawling salmon in Alaska. They thought.

So let the tears fall. Like the endless sleet over the Sound.

“It’s such a view-”

“Yes. And such a pity.”

“Well now, Mrs Allen, please don’t be strangers, come over any time.”

“I hope the little one is happy at the school. Hear we’ve bad weather coming!”

Nora stammered her answers, bewildered. Her black heels scrunching in the damp gravel of the churchyard  path. Who were these people? With their pleasant fibs  and lying pleasantries? Nora was nonetheless grateful for their presence, to stave off the moment. As long as there are people around, the terrible climax – which Nora  knew was coming – was temporarily postponed; so Nora shook hands and accepted consolations, then she climbed in a car by the church gate and Martin drove her and Barry to the Mountain View Cemetery, where he and Clarissa had helped them arrange a kind of wake. Henry was driving Nora’s parents. He probably wanted to do it so he could bicker with Nora’s dad in the car.

Nora sat in the back of Martin’s car with Barry, her arm around his slender shoulders. Her son in black.

As Martin took a curve, Barry tugged at her sleeve, and said, “Mommy, am I invisible now?”

Nora was so used to the strangeness she was barely fussed. She just shrugged. And said: “Let’s look for rabbit’s nests later.”

The car pulled off the main road and rolled down to the Cemetery. A break in  the clouds was shining a light directly on many of the tombstones, with the sky forbidding, and grey, beyond: the scene was so dramatic it was as if the place was floodlit.

An empty stage, impatiently awaiting the actors. For the final scene.

_Where am I going? A wake?_

Could you have a wake for a person who has been dead over a year? Perhaps it is just an excuse for everyone to drown themselves in Old Pretender Beer, and whisky.

Nora’s dad, of course, needed little excuse. Twenty minutes afterwards, they  all gathered in the pub and he was downing his third or fourth very large glass and she could see the tiny beads of sweat on his forehead as he squabbled with Henry. They’d never got on. Two would-be alpha males. A clash of antlers.

The tension of this moment has only made their antagonism worse. Nora hovered at the edge of their conversation, wondering if she should try to make peace, wondering if she could be bothered. Her dad was holding up his glass of pure malt Scotch, to the wintry light from the window.

“Here is the outcome of the mystical alchemy of distillation, turning the rain-pure water into that golden liquid of life, of the immortal God.”

Henry looked at him. ‘“Prefer gin.”

Nora’s dad said: “How are the loft extensions, Henry?”

“Grand, David, grand.”

“Guess this kind of local architecture, this vernacular stuff, it must allow you a lot of time off so you can come down here for a snifter.”

“Yeah. It’s ideal for an alcoholic like me.”

Nora’s dad glowered. Angus glowered right back.

“So, aye, David, have you stopped making the TV commercials – what was it, tampons?”

How could they still be bickering? Today? After a child’s funeral? But then again, why should they stop? Why not just carry on? Nothing was ever going to stop, it was all going to get worse and worse. Perhaps they were right to just carry on as they have always carried on: their mild and mutual dislike was a kind of normality, something comforting and reliable.

But even if they were not going to cease, Nora had heard enough of this verbal skirmishing for three lifetimes. Turning to her left, she saw her mother standing just yards away, glass of red wine in hand. She walked over, and tilted a frown at her dad and Henry. “They’re at it again.”

“Darling, they like it. You know that.” She put a wrinkled hand on Nora’s arm. Her dreaming green eyes were as bright as ever though; bright as her son’s. “I’m so glad that’s over. You did well, Nora. I was proud of you. No mother should have to go through what you’ve been through.” A glug of wine.

“Two funerals? Two!”

“Mum.”

“And what about you? Are you feeling better now? Darling? You know – inside? Are you and Henry OK?”

Nora didn’t want to get into this. Not today. Not now.

“We’re OK.”

“Are you sure? It’s just that you seem, I don’t know, there’s some tension, isn’t there?”

Nora gazed back. Unblinking.

“Mum. We’re fine.” _What should I tell her? Hey, Mum, turns out my husband slept with Joe’s ex-wife, maybe a month after my son died?_

Her mother gleaned the meaning from her silence, and moved on. Nervously.

“So, has the move helped? It is such a lovely spot here, despite all the weather that city has. I can entirely see why you love it so.”

Nora nodded; and her mother babbled away: “And Barry. Barry! Of course it is terrible to say, but there is a chance, darling, that now Barry is alone he may lead a more normal life, you know, twins are so different, now he is more normal, in the most terrible way, of course.”

“I suppose.” Part of Nora wanted to be offended by this, but she did not have the energy. Maybe her mother was right. She sipped too much wine and a little dribbled down her chin, and she went on:

“And of course they fought didn’t they? Barry and Sebastian? I remember you telling me, Barry was the weaker one, in the womb, don’t twins fight for nutrition? They were great friends, inseparable, but they certainly fought for your attention, and Sebastian complained more, didn’t he?”

_What is all this about?_ It barely mattered; Nora was hardly listening. She could see Barry at the edge of things.

Barry, standing in the doorway of the restaurant looking out, through the glass door at the snow.

How was he coping? What was he thinking? He was as alone as a human can be. The love and pity rose in Nora as nausea, once more, and she quit talking with her mother, and pushed through the drinkers to Barry.

“Barry, are you OK?”

He turned and gave her a brief smile. “I’m still here, Mommy, but I’m not. Not any more.”

Nora stifled her pained response, and smiled back. “Are you annoyed by the snow?”

He frowned. Not understanding. She took his softly scarred hand and kissed it, and brushed his pink cheek.

“Sweetheart. You’re looking at the snow.”

“Oh,” he said, blankly. “No. Not the snow actually, Mommy.” He pointed at the door, his thin arm elegant and somehow adult, in that long-sleeved black suit, “I was just talking to Sebastian in the car, Mommy: he was in the mirror Daddy uses.”

“But-”

“But now he’s gone, and I remember the priest saying he has gone to heaven, and I wanted to ask him where it was.”

“Barry-”

“And no one would tell me, so I searched for Sebastian, Mommy, because I don’t think he’s in heaven, he’s in here. With us, isn’t he? Remember how we played hide and seek, Mommy, in Surrey. Remember?”

Oh yes. Nora remembered. The memory made Nora sadder than sad. But she had to stay sane for Barry.

“Of course, darling.”

“So I thought he was playing hide and seek again. And I looked in all the places like we used to hide when playing hide and seek at home, Mommy. But Sebastian was squeezed behind the wardrobe thingy over there.”

“What?”

“Yes, Mommy, I felt his hand.”

Nora gazed at her son. “You felt your brother’s hand?”

“Yes, Mommy, and it was scary. I have never felt him before. I don’t want to find him if he is going to touch me, it’s too scary.”

_This is too scary for me, let alone my son._

“Barry …"

_How can I calm him?_ Nora had no idea. Because Barry seemed to be regressing. He was talking more like a five-year-old in his perplexity.

She needed a child psychologist. She’d have an appointment with Snow, next week. _But can I last until then?_

“Mommy, do you ever talk to Sebastian?”

“Sorry?”

“Can you ever hear him or see him? I know he wants to talk to you.”

How could Nora distract her son? Perhaps she should ask him questions. Perhaps she should ask him some serious questions? It would, after all, be difficult to make things more distressing.

“Come on,” Nora said. “Let’s go outside. There may be otters by the pier.”

There won’t be otters by the pier, but Nora wanted to talk to him alone. Obediently, Barry followed Nora out, into the chilly afternoon air. The snow had gone, leaving a ghost of whiteness on the ground behind. Together they walked to the pier, and knelt down on the moist concrete, and gazed at the rocks and shingle, the complex seaweeds wafting in the tide.

“No otters,” said Barry. “None. Never see otters, Mommy, not yet.”

“No. They are very elusive.”

She turned to her son. “Barry, do you remember if Sebastian was angry with Daddy, um, on the weekend that he fell?”

Her son looked at Nora. Blank. Passive. “Oh yes. He was.”

The moment tensed.

“Why?”

“Because Daddy kept kissing him.”

A herring gull called, solitary, and maddened.

“Kissing him?”

“Yes, kissing and hugging.” Barry was looking at Nora, unblinking, looking her honestly in the eyes.

“He was kissing him, and hugging him, and he told me he was scared. He did it a lot, all the time, all the time.”

He paused, gazing blankly at Nora. She tried not to show her thoughts, her lurid memories, returning: the way Henry kissed his sons, especially Sebastian. Over the years. He was the hugger, the kisser. The tactile one.

Nora pictured Barry on his lap, after the accident with the window. The sense of awkwardness; the sudden thought that he was too old to be sitting on Daddy’s lap. But he liked it?

The herring gull wheeled away. Nora felt as if she were crashing. In mid-air. Falling to earth.

“Think it scared him, Mommy. Daddy scared him.”

Was this it? Was this what she was looking for, and not seeing?

“Barry, this is very important. You _have_ to tell me the truth.” Nora swallowed her fury, and her grief, and her anxiety, together. “Are you saying that Daddy kissed and hugged Sebastian, in a certain way? A way that made him upset? And scared?”

Barry paused. Then nodded. “Yes, Mommy.”

“You’re sure?”

“Oh yes. But he still loved Daddy. He’s Daddy. I love Dada. Can we look for otters over by the other beach?”

Nora restrained the urge to scream. _I have to stay on top of this. I have to go off and talk to Snow again. Have to. NOW. Who cares if this is Sebastian’s funeral?_

Her mom had wandered out of the pub. Sad, and genial, and drunk, with a glass in hand.

Nora grabbed her. “Play with Barry,” she said fiercely. “Please. Look after him.”

She nodded, vaguely, and half-smiled in a boozy way, but she obeys and bends to  chuck her grandson under the chin. And Nora took her phone, and she walked down to the other end of the pier, where no one can hear.

First, Nora tried Snow’s office number. No answer. Then, she tried his home number; no answer.

_What next?_ For several moments Nora stood there, looking across the mudflats and the incoming tide: towards Central City.

Snow. Nora remembered something she said. And where she stopped. And seemed hesitant. It was Pillsbury. The child psychiatrist Emma Pillsbury.

She entered the words in Google.

Emma Pillsbury. Child Psychologist.

Immediately her Wiki page flashed up. She worked at Johns Hopkins. She was quite famous.

Nora scanned her biography. The wind whispered in the firs and pines, like a faint chorus of disapproval. Pillsbury was a busy woman. She had loads of citations. Nora read the list, stopping at: _Evidence of Paternal Abuse in Twins._

Her eyes rested on the words. _Paternal Abuse in Twins._

Nora clicked on the link but it just gave her a one-line summary.

_Elevated levels of paternal sexual abuse in identical twins: a meta-analysis and proposed explanations._

This was it. Nora was close. Nearly there. But she needed to read the entire paper.

Breathing deeply, and calmly, Nora clicked two or three times until she found a copy of the paper. The site demanded cash. She took out her card from her purse and typed in her card-numbers, paying her money for the PDF.

And then she read it in twenty minutes: sitting here in her car, as the sun set.

It was a dense, but short article. Pillsbury had, it seems, collated dozens of cases of sexual abuse by fathers of twins, especially twin daughters, ‘commonly the favoured twin’. Barry and Sebastian were twin boys. Oh well.

Nora read on, the phone trembling in her hand.

Signs of abuse include intensified rivalry between twins, _‘self-harming by the abused and/or her_ _co-twin_ _’,_ inexplicable expressions of guilt and shame, _‘an appearance of happiness which cannot be trusted’, ‘the non-abused twin can exhibit as much psychological harm and mental disturbance as the abused twin if they are exceptionally close and privy to each other’s secrets, as many twins are’;_ and then a final stab: _‘self-harm or even suicide is not unknown in the abused twin’._

It all felt so normal. Reading this. Sitting here. Against a car. Learning that her husband, it seemed, sexually abused Sebastian. Or at least got _way_ too close.

_Why didn’t I see it?_ The special hugs: between Daddy and Sebastian, between Daddy and his little ‘Jumping Jack’ – that _stupid_ name, his icky term of endearment. And what about those times he would go into his son’s bedroom, at night – when Barry was awake and reading with Nora – leaving him alone with Sebastian?

This was surely it. This was the pattern Nora had been searching for, the pattern hidden everywhere she looked. Henry was abusing Sebastian. That’s why he was frightened of him. He was always his special, special favourite. He liked him to sit on his knee whenever he could. Nora saw it. Hidden in plain sight.

Barry had confirmed it, Pillsbury predicted it.

_He was abusing him._ It confused him and scared him and in the end, he jumped. It was suicide. And so much of Barry’s subsequent bewilderment and distress must come from this.

Because Barry knew. Maybe he witnessed some of the actual abuse? Maybe Sebastian told him, long before he jumped. That would have upset Barry so much he might even have pretended to be Sebastian, to deal with the trauma. To somehow pretend his brother had not died because of what his father did:

Barry went into denial about everything. Maybe that’s why they were swapping identities that summer, trying to avoid Daddy?

The possibilities were endless and bewildering, but they all attained the same conclusion: Nora’s husband bore the guilt for the death of his son, and now he was tearing the other into pieces.

_What do I do?_

She could go up to the road to McLeods, the shop that sells stuff for deer stalkers: buy herself a big shotgun. Go to the pub. Kill her husband. Bang. The anger inside her was virulent.

Because, oh God, Nora needed revenge. She did. She did. But her needs, right now, were irrelevant. She was not a murderer; she was a mother. And what matters was her son Barry. For now, despite her fury, she just needed a practical way out of here: a way for Nora and Barry to escape this horror. So she had to stay calm, and be clever.

Nora stare over the roof of the car: a father was walking down the road with his toddler daughter. Maybe it was a grandfather, he looked old. Rather stooped in a Barbour jacket and knotted red scarf. He was pointing at a huge herring gull swooping down, pecking, dangerous, a white flash in the air.

_Evidence of paternal sexual abuse._

The anger rose inside her: like fire.


	23. Chapter 23

Henry slipped into the driver’s seat, with the weekend’s shopping from the Co-op.

The motor kicked into life and Henry sped up: cruising the big main roads. It was getting very dark already, and the weather was brewing something nasty to the north. There was much more than a lick of cold in the air; the firs on the north coastline were bending in the sharpening wind. There were rumours of a real snow storm next week, perhaps this was the first hint.

The last thing they needed was a proper winter storm. To be snowed in the apartment for hours. Yes, the funeral yesterday had gone OK, considering. Everyone had come and gone, the rituals had been completed.

But the dark, underlying cracks in the family were unresolved, the terrible confusion in Barry, his contempt for Nora, her mistrust of him because of Francine.

He steered the car, and frowned at the louring sky.

His guilt was intense. He may not have had sex with Francine that night, but their flirtation had begun the night of the accident. The first unexpected touch, the different way they looked at each other: a lingering gaze. He’d known what she wanted, from that night on, and yes he’d encouraged it by staying, that night, much longer than planned. Nora didn’t know all of the details, and those included Francine and how she had approached him as he was working at the hospital, his old job. Before it fell apart.

_Oh, I can drive to Granville later._

She looked better than Henry thought she would, after abandoning her child and Joe for drugs. And so Henry had told her this, complimented this, and she had smiled. A small smile.

It only got slightly serious _after_ the accident. After Nora went off the deep end. And in the end, they’d only had sex a couple of times.

He had, at the last moment, drawn back from Francine – out of loyalty, however misguided, to Nora: to his family. But also out of respect to Francine, who thought his signals were something serious. She even told him and showed him pictures of her son, Wally, something she hid from Joe but told Henry to _never_ bring up. They were guilty together. And they kept their secrets.

The anger was now urgent inside him. Henry tried to calm it. Sniffing the air. Cold and rainy. What would happen now?

Next week, Barry was meant to go back to school. How would that work? The Eastside teachers, perhaps regretting their hasty exclusion, had taken to calling the Allens, and imploring them: _Give us another chance._ Despite their pleas, Henry wanted to try a different school, or maybe home schooling; but Nora was determined to have one last go, lest Barry feel defeated.

But if he went back to Eastside – if he went to any school right now – Henry could envisage all kinds of terrors; they were obscene in their madness.

Perhaps, then, a proper winter storm would be fitting: a suitable backdrop to the intensifying strangeness. Because their lives had become melodrama. Or maybe some form of masked theatre.

And all three of them were in disguise.

He was nearly about to make the turn to enter the parking garage when he saw her. Nora. He wasn’t even in the building, yet, and across the street, by the pier, was her, looking confused.

He pulled over. She ran over. Even in the semi-dusk it was clear she was alarmed.

“Henry!”

“What is it?”

“Jett!”

He noticed Nora was in a plain windbreaker, and soaking wet. The snow was getting thicker, and turning into watery beads on the jacket.

“What the hell?”

“He’s gone, Jett’s gone.”

“How? Where?”

“We were on the pier, taking him for a walk, and we stopped by that Jitters place, I left Barry outside and he came in and said he ran off, so we searched, everywhere, he’s gone, he’s really gone - but-”

“I don’t understand –?”

“We can hear him, Henry.”

“What? Get in.”

There was snow swirling all around them, visibility was poor. The streetlights were flickering on, yellow in a haze of all white. The one above them flashed, making a moment of clarity; Henry saw the pain on Nora’s face. He realized what she meant.

“He ran onto the beach? Christ.”

“He’s stuck somewhere out there – we heard him howling about ten minutes ago.” She gestured, wildly, at the great expanse of sand and rock, and those sucking, pungent, dangerous tidal mudflats. The tide had halfway come in and the water was freezing cold. The pier area of the business district in Central City was mainly for shipments, and one large shipyard, but on this pier, it was mainly for tourists. There was a small staircase down to the beach, which no one ever walked on because it was horrible for swimming. It was composed of rocks, and always got completely swallowed up by the tide.

Henry squinted at what he could see in the blizzard-like weather, but it was no good. How did Jett even get down there? All the way from Jitters? Across the street? He could have been run over.

“Henry, we have to do something, but – but what? Barry is going crazy. We can’t just let Jett drown in the mud, in the next tide.”

“OK. OK.” Henry turned to the passenger seat where Nora now sat, putting a calming hand on her shoulder. And as he did, she flinched. She definitely flinched.

What did she think he was going to do? There was certainly a new expression in her eyes: she was trying to hide it. And the expression said _I hate you._

She was that angry about Francine?

He thrust the thoughts away. Had no choice. He’d deal with this later.

“I’ll get my waterproofs.”

It took Henry ten minutes to park outside Queen Square and ride the elevator up to their floor, forcing himself inside his waterproof pants and oily rain-jacket. He tucked the plastic of his pant legs inside big green wellingtons. Sarah and Lydia stared at him as he strode into the kitchen. He slipped his head torch on and adjusted the tightness. It was going to be fearsomely unpleasant out there. A thick fog was rolling in, as well.

Probably the worst possible conditions to go onto that beach.

“Henry, please, be careful?”

“’Course.”

He nodded at his wife. For some reassurance. Yet her anxious smile was, again, quite unconvincing. Barry ran and hugged him, making a crinkling noise as he embraced the plastic of his waterproofs. Henry gazed down at his only son. Felt a surge of love and protectiveness. Nora said:

“You know you don’t have to.”

But she trailed off. All three of them turned as one, and looked through the completely white kitchen window.

“Yes, I do,” said Henry. “I have to try.”

“Please save Jett, please, please! Daddy, please: he’ll be drowned if we don’t. Please!”

Barry was hugging him again, tight around his waist. His voice trembled with tearfulness.

“Don’t worry, Bear,” Henry said. “I’ll get Jett back.”

He gave Nora one final, bewildered glance. _What was she playing at?_ How did this happen? Again, he didn’t have time to work it through. However it had happened, Jett was out there, probably stuck under the pier, and needed rescuing.

Henry stepped outside Queen Square into the rough slap of the wind. The snow was still swirling.

And yet the fog was also flooding down the Sound, from the north.

Slipping on his plastic hood, Henry trudged against the flailing wetness, towards the causeway, following the beam of his head torch. He didn’t take the car, the pier was only across the street. He made it to the top of the pier as a faint but unmistakable howl drifted on the wind. A dog.

Howling. Loud enough he could hear it from the top.

His dog.

The rocks. The damn rocks.

“Jett!” he shouted, into the blizzard-bittered wind. “C’mere! Jett! Jett!”

Nothing. The wind rappling his hood was so brutal it obscured any other noise. Henry tore off the hood of his waterproofs, he would just have to get wet and go down; at least this way he could hear better. But where was the dog? Jett’s pitiful howling had seemed to come from the southern edge of the curving pier: the opposite side of the sullen from where he stood.

But was it really a dog howling? Who was out here? What was out here? It was all so lightless. A white Bichon Frise would be very hard to see in the blizzard, in the darkness under the pier. Bichon Frises were not water dogs. How did Jett get down below? Did he slip? Was he blown? The fog was thickening along the shore, hiding everything. Obscuring the lights of the city village. Even across the street was completely invisible, cocooned in freezing mist.

“Jett? Where are you! Jett, buddy! Jett!”

Again, he heard nothing. Henry hoped Nora had enough sense to call the fire department, or the CCPD. The snow pelting his face was near-horizontal: giving the wind a rasping edge, cutting coldly into his face. Henry strode forward, down the rickety wooden steps – but he slipped on a kelp-slimed rock that came out of nowhere; the slip was serious – he fell to his knees, cracking a shin very painfully against the boulder.

“Fuck.” He put a hand in the gloop and lifted himself. “Jett! Jett! Where the fuck are you? Jettttttttt!”

Standing up, slowly, Henry bent himself into the driving cold.

_Lean into the wind._

He took a deep breath of ice and air. He knew very well that in these conditions he was possibly risking his own life. What did Martin say?

_Up north, in winter, no one can hear you scream._

He could break a leg in this horrible, treacherous mud, get himself sucked in, and get himself stuck.

Of course Nora would telephone someone, but it might take them awhile to rustle up a posse, and the tides rose very fast. He wouldn’t drown in an hour, but he could freeze to death in the frigid, imprisoning water.

“Jett!”

Henry scanned the nothingness. Frantically wiping water off his face.

_There?_

“Jett?”

There!

He heard it.

A small, pitiful, unmistakable howl. Weakening, but definitely there. Judging by the noise, the dog was twenty, forty yards away. Henry took out his hand flashlight and switched it on, his hands slippy and damp, and numbed with iciness, fiddling to press the plastic switch.

_That’s it._ Henry lifted the flashlight. Directing it towards that spot, Henry stared, and stared, into the ghostly drifts of fog.

Yes. It was Jett. He was just a dim shape, but he was alive. And the dog was in water up to his neck, under the pier. It was freezing cold.

The dog was going to drown, very soon. Henry had at most a few minutes to reach the animal, before the waters completely engulfed him.

“Jesus. Jett. Jett!”

A pitiful whimper. A dying animal. What would this do to Barry, if his Jett drowned? It would crack Henry open, too.

Henry began to run, but it was impossible. Every step was either sucked into water, or dangerously skiddy. He almost toppled forward on one wet, seaweed-skinned boulder, made extra slick by the relentless moisture coming down. One bad fall and he could split his skull on a rock. Knock himself out. That would probably be fatal.

Perhaps he had made a mistake. Risking his own life this much. He thought of Nora’s deceptive smile. She’d planned this? No. Ridiculous.

He had to slow down, but if he slowed, Jett died.

He could sludge faster?

Dropping to his knees, Angus crawled. Through the water. The water was achingly cold, dribbling down his neck and shoulders, soaking through into his bones. He was shivering, feeling maybe the first hints of hypothermia, but he was nearly there. Fifteen yards. Ten. Eight.

The dog was dying. Only Jett’s head was visible. Jett’s eyes shone with terror in the beam of the flashlight. But Henry was getting close. And there was a wooden platform here,  perhaps  some scuppered boat, half-buried in the slime under the pier for decades. It was hard to see in the dark, but the wood provided a bridge to the patch of cold water and mud where Jett was stranded.

“OK, boy, OK, OK, I’m here, I’m coming. Hold on.”

Henry crawled across the wood. He was five yards from the dog, he was working out a rescue plan: he’d have to reach into the water and yank the dog, bodily, from the gunge.

But then Jett moved. The incoming waters must have loosened the mud. The dog was half-swimming, half-struggling: rescuing himself. And he was wriggling away from Henry, up onto the shingle.

Henry called, in desperation, “Jett!”

He heard a crack of splitting wood. As Henry lifted a knee, to stand, the wood beneath him snapped, and opened up.

At once Henry was plunged into a sump of cold seawater. Deep and silty, and very cold. There was no mud under there. He was flailing in freezing seas, in heavy boots and waterproofs. Desperate, he lunged for another spar of timber but it sank into gritty water. He was already up to his neck. Kicking at the void.

Above the pier, Central City flashed through the dark. A pale glow of silver. Then black.


	24. Chapter 24

_Where is Henry?_ Why was he taking so long? Was he drowning? Nora hoped so. And yet she didn’t. She did not know any more.

Nora was standing in the Queen Square lobby, sheltered and gazing at the swirling greyness, but it was pointless.

In the snow and darkness, she could be staring into space: a deep grey saddening void. Without stars.

“Mommy, where is Daddy?”

Barry tugged at the sleeve of Nora’s cardigan. Innocent, green eyes unblinking; his tiny shoulders were trembling with worry. Much as Nora loathed Henry, he could not lose his dad; not like this.

_Perhaps I should have restrained Henry?_ But he would always have tried to save his dog, no matter what the danger.

The wind lashed the living room window with a whip of strong blizzard.

This was taking too long. Once again Nora read the various shades of grey that constituted the fog, the densely veiled moon, the misty shoreline of Central City. Nothing.

“Mommy! Where is Dada?”

Nora held Barry’s hand. It was shaking.

“Daddy will be fine. He’s just getting Jett; it’s dark, so it’s difficult.”

Nora wished she believed this. She wished she understood all this. She wished she knew whether she wanted her husband to live or die.

She wasn’t even sure how the dog got under the pier: one minute he was outside Jitters in the peaceful snowfall, held on a leash by Barry; Nora was inside ordering hot chocolate for them both – and then Barry screamed and ran inside and the dog was gone and Nora ran back out in a mad dash to see nothing.

“I want Daddy.”

Perhaps Jett saw something, and gave chase? Or maybe Barry chased the dog away? Frightened him into fleeing? Jett always seemed so scared of storms, or of someone, or something.

Nora shuddered. She watched from where Barry was opening the main door, with difficulty. She stayed alert, ready to go after him if he were to bolt. But she didn’t have to.

“Mommy, it’s Jett! I heard him!”

Was he right? He couldn’t be. They wouldn’t have been able to hear it from across the street. Releasing his hand, Nora stepped to the door and poked her head out. At once the ugly weather tries to push her back in, the angry blizzard, the bullying wind. Helpless, urgent, Nora shouted, towards the pier, towards the shapeless background where everything was smothered in mist.

“Henry! Jett! Henry! Jett!”

Nora may as well have been shouting down a coal mine. Or in a locked and dripping cellar. The words were robbed from her mouth and whirled away on the gale.                       Taken south to Eastside Elementary and Surrey to the east.

Oh, Surrey. The despair surged. Tragedy had chased them from there.

“Dada is coming back, Mommy?” said Barry from the door. “He’s coming back. Like Barry.”

“Yes, yes, of course he is.”

He was dressed in dark jeans and black jacket, his simple blue top was too thin. The cold would get at him. “Go back inside, Bear, please. Daddy will be fine, he’s just gone to get Jett. He will be back very soon, please, just go and read something, it won’t be long.”

Barry turned and ran into the couch area, Nora pursued him as far as the decrepit, paint-flecked Bakelite telephone hung next to the table. The old receiver was  ludicrously heavy and the dial ponderously slow. She ground out Martin and Clarissa’s number. But it didn’t answer; their phone just rung and rung, perversely innocuous.

She tried Joe’s mobile. Again, like the Steins, nothing. “This is Joe West, hello. If you’re calling about work, try the CCPD landline, 7-9-2-”

Nora slammed the phone down. Angry now, angry at everything. Who could help them? CCPD was the first one she tried, directly after Henry had gone out. All of the phone lines were busy, or taken out by the storm. Her mobile had no service.

Mick the boatman! Yes. Mick. His number was in Nora’s mobile. Snatching it from her pocket, she waited– painfully – for it to switch on, and as she did, Barry wandered into the window area. From somewhere. He looked different. His hair was wilder. He gazed at Nora, in that placid, trancelike way, as she shook her phone in frustration:

_Come on, come on, come the fuck on._ He had his old car blanket tucked under one arm. He eyed her dubiously, and said:

“Mommy, maybe it doesn’t matter about Jett. ‘Bastian didn’t come back, maybe it doesn’t matter if Jett doesn’t come back.”

“What, Barry, darling? I’m trying to get a number-”

“Daddy comes back, doesn’t he? Please, Mommy. Barry doesn’t mind. Sebastian is gone now, so it doesn’t matter what Daddy did. Can we get him out of the water?”

The _what?_ What was he saying?

Nora gazed at him. Bewildered. And with tears ready to roll. Her tears that were for Sebastian, and what Henry did to him.

_No. I have to look at the phone._ Its happy, friendly screen glowed in the darkness of the badly lit lobby. It told Nora she had no signal. Of course. She pressed two buttons and she reached CONTACTS. M or R, M or R.

Mick Rory. Here was his number.

Running with the phone in hand over to the sofa area, Nora grabbed the heavy old receiver and dialed, with frenzied patience, 7, 9, 2, 5, and the phone rung at the other end – _pick up, pick up, pick up_ – and eventually Nora heard a voice, crackled and gruff, transport through the storm.

“Whadd’ya want.” It was more of a creepy growl.

“Mick, it’s Nora. Nora Allen, um, Martin Stein’s friend.”

A slow, frustrating pause.

“Aye. Nora. Well now. How are you?”

“We’ve got a problem, a big-” The line was popping and seething. “Please.”

“I’m not-d” _Hissssss_ “-atching you-”

“F-”

“Nora …"

“We need help, please help-” the landline went dead, even the fuzz of static disappeared, and Nora almost threw it at the wall in frustration. But then the static whistled in her ear, so loud it hurt, and the line suddenly cleared, and she heard that voice again.

“Are ye in some trouble now, Mrs Allen?”

“Yes!”

“What exactly?”

"My husband, Henry, is on the 52 Pier – we lost our dog, he went out to save him, at low tide, in the blizzard, and now I’m worried, he’s been gone so long, ages, I don’t know what to do – I’m worried for him and-”

“He’s on 52 Pier, ye say?”

“Yes. I’m just across the street, with my son inside, we’re-”

“On his own? With yer dog?”

"Yes!”

Nora could hear the disapproval in the hissy silence that followed.

“OK now, calm yerself, Mrs Allen. I’ll get some of the boys. You don’t expect me paying any more favours now don’t you-”`

“Oh thanks, thank you!”

Nora put the phone down before the line gave out on her, as if it were some deadly computer game and the phone was her life-force seeping away until she heard _bzzz_ _, game over._ Nora suddenly turned and there he was again: Barry. Nora almost fell back against the wall in alarm, and surprise.

He was simply standing there. Blank-faced. Tranced. Eyes open wide and saddening green, right behind her.

How did he do that? She heard nothing.

Barry was a mere three feet away. Rigid and silent, and staring, his face pallid with anxiety. Nora didn’t hear or see him walk from the window area. She certainly didn’t hear him standing right behind her.

_How does he do this? How many Barrys lurk in this house?_ This was crazy. Nora had the dizzyingly insane sensation that there were two identical Barrys in Queen Square, playing games in the shadows and cold, between the cobwebs and the big windows, just like Barry and Sebastian used to play games in Surrey, especially that last summer:  _this is me, no, it’s me_ , their boyish laughter ringing down the hallway as Nora first chased one, then the other, hiding and seeking, as they tried to perplex her.

But this was her mind misting up; she needed clarity.

“Daddy is coming back, with Jett, isn’t he?”

Frowning and sad, he gazed. The pain inside him must be unbearable, losing a twin, and now frightened of losing his dog, and his daddy. That would complete his destruction.

_As much as I despise Henry, he has to survive._

“Mommy, he is coming back, isn’t he? Please, Mommy?”

“Yes!”

Nora kneeled down and crushed him into her arms and hugged him tight, tight, _tight_. “Sweetheart, Daddy will be coming back soon, I promise.”

“Promise?”

“Really promise. A million times. Come on, let’s go sit on the couch and you can show me Angry Granny and wait for Daddy and Jett.”

Nora didn’t mean this. She just wanted an excuse to sit in that lobby and look through the window, to see if anything was happening. And so, as Nora handed Barry her phone to play that silly game, her eyes fixated, furiously, on the greyness.

Just greyness. Maybe a smear of moonlight as the snow and fog parted for a moment. Closer to hand, the pathetic light from the streetlights outside showed how pathetic the visibility really was.

The wind’s howling was unabating. As if it could go on for weeks.

This was real winter coming in now: the new regime announcing itself.

The entire Sound was a valley of snow. How would they find Henry in all that? Did Nora care?

_Yes, I do._ Maybe in the wrong way. Nora wanted him back and alive, so she could confront him.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Nora said to Barry.

“Why?”

“There’s nothing to see.”

“What are those lights, Mommy?”

“Just people helping Daddy, that’s all, everyone is helping out.”

 Nora grasped his hand and lead him firmly into the elevator and together, they sat silently on their own sofa, much more comfortable than the weird one in the lobby.

“Mommy, what would you like it to snow if it didn’t snow water?”

“Sorry?”

Barry looked at Nora, squinting, thoughtfully. And Nora smiled, and tried not to think about Henry or Sebastian or the hugging and the kissing and Nora said, “What?”

“If snow wasn’t water, what would you like it to be? I’d like it to be stars, raining stars – that would be so pretty.”

“Yes.”

“Or  people.”  He  quietly  laughed.  “That  would  be  funny,  wouldn’t  it,  Mommy, raining people, everywhere…”

Together, they watched the iPad and Barry’s building in that game, Minecraft, then they went back cuddling under Barry’s car blanket which smelt of Jett, and they talked about the dog in a nice way, because Nora wanted to keep Barry’s anxious mind diverted. Barry listened to Nora and he nodded and he laughed, and so Nora laughed as well, but even within the laughter, Nora could feel her sadness and anger.

This was still taking too long. Where was Henry? _They cannot find him. They’ve lost him._ Nora imagined the boys from that bar in Keystone scouring the sands, from the boat, and tiring, and rubbing cold hands together and blowing warmth between fingers, not quite looking each other in the eye, knowing they have failed, _there’s no sign of him, we’ll have to wait ..._

If Henry died, would they survive? Maybe they would. At least there would be an ending.

The fire of anger rose and the fire of anger subsided. Nora stared at her son as he stares at the glowing screen, the electronic reflected in his shining green eyes.

“Nora.”

_What?_

“Jesus.”

“Daddy!”

It was Henry. He was in the frame of the apartment doorway, covered in mud, almost a mud-man, his eyes like slots of dark life in the muck; but he was alive.

Behind him was Mick and some other men, they were all laughing. Their voices filled the apartment, they smelled of diesel and seaweed and thick oily mud – and Henry was alive.

Barry scampered off the sofa and ran to him and Henry held him at a distance, and kissed him on the forehead.

“I know you want to hug me,” he said, walking painfully to the sofa. “But I wouldn’t advise it. This mud stinks.”

Barry jumped up and down.

“Dadadada!”

“Jesus we thought-” Nora almost said it, but she didn’t say it. For Barry’s sake. For everyone’s sake.

Mick Rory interrupted: “We fished yer husband out about ten feet off 52nd Pier.”

Henry looked sheepish. He came near Nora and pecked her gently on the cheek. She tried not to flinch. He gave her a strange, suspicious glance and said: “I had no idea where I was – in that blizzard.”

Nora gazed past him.

There was no dog. Where was the dog?

“Jett?”

Barry was gazing at his father, rapt, but also worried.

“Yes, Daddy, where …?"

Henry smiled, but his smile was faked.

“He escaped! He got out of the mud, and ran off. We’ll find him tomorrow, but he’s fine.”

Nora was guessing this was a lie. Perhaps Jett got away, but there was no guarantee he would survive, or be found again. She was not pressing this now. She lay a caressing hand on her husband’s cold, muddy face; she wanted to slap him. Very hard. She wanted to punch him cold, and claw at his eyes. Hurt him.

This caress was for Barry’s benefit, and Mick, for everyone but her.

“You must be freezing, Henry. Henry, look at you – you need a bath!”

“A hot bath,” said Henry, “is just about the best idea on earth, Nora. Can you give Mick and Len a glass of the Macallan, the good stuff. I promised them a dram. By way of thanks, for …" He glanced at Barry, he hesitated, and said: “You know, just for helping out. Nora?”

“Of course,” Nora said, and she forced out the smile of fake relief.

Henry squelched his way carefully into the bathroom. Nora heard water: she turned to her son.

“Barry, can you fetch some glasses, sweetie?”

Whisky was brought, and poured. The men apologized for their dampness and Nora said, _Think nothing,_ and they sat on the sofa and the chairs, and the heat was turned on high. They sat and they drank, and Barry gazed at the men, as if they were brilliant new animals in the zoo. Len and Mick looked around him, at the walls, and said:

“You’ve made a real go of the place, aye?”

What could Nora say? The sadness dilated, until it filled the room. She mumbled a faint _thank you_ and there was no more.

They drank in silence. She could hear Henry splashing in the bath. She looked at the door of the bathroom. _We_ _are all safe. Yet we are in real danger._

Breaking the silence, Nora started talking about Eastside and Yaletown, and the Central City college, they joined in, thankfully. Nora was happy to talk about anything. She didn’t care. What was she going to do about Henry?

Leonard Snart, the younger-ish man, clean-shaven, rawly handsome, took his third very large glass of Macallan, and interrupted Mick’s chatter: “A thin place. That’s what they called this.”

Mick shushed him. Barry was now fast asleep on the sofa, curled up. A soft, mist-blue blanket over his shoulder.

Nora tipped her own Scotch; the lights flickered. She was so tired.

“What?”

Leonard was clearly a little drunk. He burped and didn’t say sorry and then said: “The locals, they used to call 52 Pier a thin place. That means a place where there are spirits–” he chuckled into his glass – “real spirits, where the spirit world comes close.”

“Ach, load of nonsense,” said Mick, eyeing Nora, and then Barry. Carefully. He looked as if he wanted to clout his friend.

“No,” Len said, “it’s true, Mick. Sometimes I think they’ve a point, y’know, it’s like there is something, an atmosphere.” He said this with a hint of a smirk in his eyes. Nora could detect no ill will from him, but it was just the way he said things.

He clearly didn’t know any of their family history. Or he wouldn’t go near this subject.

“A thin place. Where you can see the other world.” Len smirked. And slurped down his Scotch, and looked at Nora. “That’s what they said.”

Mick Rory tutted loudly, and said again: “Just pish. Nora, I wouldnae listen to it.”

Nora shrugged. “It’s OK. It’s interesting.”

She was being sincere. She was not fazed by historic folklore or ancient superstition: her present anxieties were disturbing enough. Mick sipped with delicacy his Scotch, savours the flavour, and then he tilted his glass at Nora’s sleeping son.

“Looks like it’s time for us to be going.”

They made their departure swiftly. Nora went back inside the kitchen. She pulled out the knife drawer.

And stared at the armoury. The gleaming knives. She liked to keep them sharp.

Quickly, she shut the knife drawer, with the knives untouched. _I am having fantasies about murder?_

Nora walked across the living room and down the hall and she opened the bathroom door – Henry was in the bath, rinsing himself, soaping his muscled arms.

Nora hated his physical presence.

“You’ve got to go get some more groceries,” Nora said. “Tomorrow.”

“What?” he said. Understandably bemused. Nora could see the thought processing in his head. _I nearly died saving the dog and she’s talking about shopping?_

But Nora couldn’t fake it any more. She just wanted him out of the house while she worked out what to do. How to confront him properly.

“Tomorrow. Shopping. Thanks.”

 

 


	25. Chapter 25

They searched for Jett all morning. Barry shouted, desperately, as they circled the pier, “Jett! Jett!”

The tide was in. Nora didn’t think the poor dog was going to emerge from the waters. But Barry was fraught:

“Jett!”

As they scanned the waters, they were cat-called by black-headed gulls. The oystercatchers looked at them, sceptically, hopping further down the beach as Nora’s son ran, shouting, and yelling.

And then crying.

“Come on,” Nora said, placing an arm over his trembling shoulders. “I’m  sure  Jett is fine. He probably ran off into the woods. We’ll put up posters.”

“He’s not coming back.” He shook her hand away. “He’s _dead_. He’s not _coming_ back. _NOT_.”

When they got back upstairs, he ran to his room. Nora had no notion of how to console him. The world itself was inconsolable: from the tearful grey seals under the pier, to the weeping wet rowans up on the pier.

And now the hours melted into each other, imperceptibly. As Barry read in his room, Nora actually did some painting. She was not sure why. Perhaps because she had vague ideas that they must somehow finish making the apartment look nicer, and then sell it. Soon. But they’d agreed to own it for a year, to not sell it for a year.

When Nora needed a break, she went into the kitchen to wash the paint from her fingers – and then she saw Henry in the doorway.

He was a solitary figure in the living room, standing, hand on the doorknob, staring straight at her. Coming for them.

Bringing the shopping, as requested.

The hatred uncoiled. Abruptly. For all Nora’s desires to be logical, to have it out, to confront him with the evidence, Nora could easily watch him drown in those cold tidal waters out by the pier and she would not budge. Not an inch. Right now, she would just stand there: and watch herself be widowed.

The anxiety flashed through her.

_Does he know that I know? How could he have guessed? He’s obviously sensed my new hostility: but how could he have pursued my thoughts that far?_

He was getting closer. The sense of purpose in his stride was unignorable. Nora edged back to the kitchen drawer, and gazed closely at the shiny cutlery, again – and this time she did it: she pulled out a kitchen knife.

The biggest and the sharpest. Then she held it in one hand, behind her back. She recognized the _insanity_ of this, even as it seemed perfectly explicable.

This was the correct thing to do.

“Hello,” he said. Gruffer than normal, shunting through the door, dropping the bags to the kitchen floor. He was unsmiling. Nora had the knife in her hand, sweatily grasped, and badly concealed. Could she use it? Was she capable of actually stabbing her own husband?

Perhaps.

Yes definitely, if he went for Barry. Who knew if the abuse had stopped. Perhaps he was calling him Sebastian. Pretending his favourite was still alive.

Did all the confusion come from him?

“Where’s Barry?” he said.

His stubble made him look villainous now, not handsome. More like a criminal on TV news: Do you know this man?

_No, I don’t._

What did he do to Sebastian? How could he do that? For how long? Six months? A year?

“He’s asleep,” Nora said, and this was a lie. Barry was in his room, reading. But she was not letting him near their surviving son. If he tried Nora really would use the knife. “He’s exhausted, Henry, I think we should let him sleep.”

“But he’s all right? Despite. You know.”

“Yes,” Nora said. “Considering all that, yes, yes, he is doing OK. Henry, please let him sleep. He has to go back to school, he needs his rest. Please.”

And it was so hard for Nora to say please. To this man, this thing. He was monstrous now; an entirely inhuman presence, and she wanted him gone.

“OK,” he said, looking Nora deep in the eyes. And the charge of hatred passes between them; he did not strive to hide it. They were two people that hated each other and they both knew it; but Nora still didn’t quite know why he hated her: _perhaps because he realizes that I have guessed his secret?_

Perhaps that was why he looked so angry when Nora told him Sebastian was Barry: he knew she was getting closer.

He turned to go to the dining room and Nora said: “Henry, I think …"

“Yes?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking, while you were shopping.”

_Can I mention my suspicions? No._ Nora couldn’t just come out and _say_ it, here, on a Sunday afternoon, in _this_ cold kitchen, where they hoped to be happy, where there were Dairylea cheese triangles in the fridge for Barry’s packed lunch, where the shelves were stacked with Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. She would have to say these terrible words sometime, she would have to say _You Touched Him_ – but not yet, not now, not with Barry still traumatized by everything; Nora wanted him to go to school tomorrow, Monday, he had to dive back in, or they would never rescue themselves.

“Yes?” Henry was waiting, impatient. “What is it?”

His jeans were dirty. He looked properly unkempt, even dishevelled. Quite unlike himself. Maybe he was turning into his real self.

“Henry, you know that things aren’t so good between us. I think maybe – just, you know, for Barry’s sake, for all of us, maybe you could spend a couple of days with the Steins.” Nora was still holding the knife behind her back, with one hand. He was staring at her as if he knew what she was doing and he did not give a fuck.

“Fine,” he said. “Fine with me. Just fine.” And his dark eyes flashed with darker contempt. “I’ll grab some work stuff and get a room at the Saints. Costs nothing this time of year.”

So that wasn’t hard. Nora heard the creak of the dining-room door as Henry shoved paperwork in a bag, then she heard noises from their bedroom. The wardrobe, his drawers, footsteps. Was he really just going to come and go, so easily? It seemed that way.

Slipping the kitchen knife back into the cutlery drawer, Nora took deep breaths of relief.

She was listening to the faint hum of wind through the window.

Ten minutes later – no more – Henry appeared in the kitchen and said, “Please hug Barry for me.” His anger was gone now. He looked softer, he looked sadder, and a stupid pang of sympathy reflexed in Nora, sympathy for the man she once loved, sympathy for the father losing his sons, until Nora remembered what he had done.

“Yes,” Nora said. “I’ll do that.”

“Thank you,” he said, very quietly. “I’ll take the car, but you can bus over and pick it up later? You guys will need the car for school.”

“Yes.”

“OK then, Nora.”

“Bye, Henry,” she said.

He looked at her. Was that contempt, or guilt, or despair? Maybe it was just a shrug. “Bye.”

And now he shook his head again, very slowly, very soberly, as if this was the last time they would ever meet, and Nora watched him hoist his bag and kick open the kitchen door, and stride down the hallway, where he pushed the button and the doors closed.

Nora watched him to make sure he really was going; but as she dwindled, Barry rushed into the kitchen, barefoot in his red pajamas, and tear-streaked, and saying:

“Is that Daddy? Where is Daddy? Is he coming to say hello?”

What could Nora say? Nothing. In the midst of her anger, Nora forgot that Barry still loved his father. Despite everything. So Nora took him in her embrace, held him firm between her arms, and she lay one protective hand on his brown hair and now they turned and they were both facing out, towards the big window and the sea, mother and son, and Nora said:

“Daddy had to do some work again.”

Barry revolved, and he looks right up at her, imploring, supplicant, his green eyes large, and puzzled, and sad.

“But he didn’t say hello?? He didn’t even come in and see me?”

“Darling-”

“He didn’t say goodbye?”

“Sweetheart-”

He was distraught now. “Didn’t say goodbye to me!” Abruptly he twisted and wrenched free and then he went running through the open kitchen door, down to the elevator in the hall, he was screaming: “Daddy? Daddy! Come back, come back!”

But Henry was too far away, no longer there, and his cries were drowning his words, his small childish voice, and Henry obviously could not hear him as he screamed, and sobbed.

“Daddy! Daddy, come back, come back, come back to me, Daddy!”

Nora had sadness choking her, so she tried to stay calm.

Her little boy was still shrieking.

And, oh, this was too much. Nora took him by the hand, and she crouched beside him: “Darling, Daddy is busy, he will be back very soon.”

“He came and went, he didn’t say hello or bye-bye, he doesn’t like me any more!”

Nora could not process another second of anguish. She was content to lie. “Of course he loves you. He is just so busy and he will be back very soon. Now come on, we’ve got to get you set for school tomorrow, come on, we can bake some cakes. Gingerbread men!”

Bake things. That was her solution. Baking cakes and biscuits. Gingerbread men. Bicarbonate of soda and those little silver sugar balls, and sugar and butter and ginger.

So that’s what they did: they baked.

But the gingerbread men came out all wrong. Like deformed things, like gingerbread animals, and Nora tried to make some desperate fun from the misshapen men, but Barry stared at them in dismay, on the hot wire tray, and he shook his head and ran to his room.

Nothing worked. Nothing would ever work any more.

Nora wondered about Barry’s deep love for his father. If he witnessed the abuse, would he still love him that much? Truly? Maybe he didn’t see anything, and Sebastian just _told_ him. Or maybe the abuse didn’t happen like that, or maybe it didn’t happen at all, and maybe Nora was presuming too much, too quickly?

For a moment, the doubts opened up – dizzying, like vertigo. Perhaps Nora was wrong? Perhaps Nora was reaching for a cliché: sex abuse, paedophilia, modern-day witchcraft – because she was blinded by anger, or grief?

No.

No. Nora had Barry’s own words, and the evidence of her own memory, and the science from Pillsbury. More likely was this: she just didn't want to accept that she lived with and loved, for ten years, a man who was capable of touching his own _son_. Because what did this say about her?

Nora threw the gingerbread men into the compost heap and looked across the view of Central City. Nothing.

Later that day Barry and her walked across the beach at low tide, scrunching dead crabs under their wellingtons, and they go and get the car from the Steins, and then they drove car home and read books. In the evening, with a bottle of wine beside her, Nora ironed his school uniform as he slept; and Nora had the AC on, despite the cold.

Because Nora wanted piercing cold air to keep her sharp and logical. _Am I doing the right thing in taking him back to Eastside?_

When they were still just about communicating, Henry almost persuaded her he shouldn’t go back.

But the school secretary was adamant that things would be better; and, until they got a new placement, homeschooling, Nora was sure, would only make him lonelier. He’d never leave the apartment.

So Eastside must be given one last chance. But as Nora ironed, she listened to the sound of waves on the TV wash up and down the beach- House Hunters, breathing in, breathing out, and she worried. The waves sounded like the fevered breathing of a child in a sickroom.

Finally, Nora slid into bed and slept. And she did not dream.

The morning sky was grey as a goose. Nora chided Barry into his school uniform, though all he wanted to do was stay at home, and ask her where Daddy was.

“He’ll be here soon.”

“Really, Mommy?”

Nora pulled his school jumper over his head and lied. “Yes, darling.”

“Mommy, I don’t want to go to school.”

“Come on.”

“Because Julian will be there, and he hates me. They _all_ hate me. He thinks there is something wrong with me, doesn’t he?”

“No, he doesn’t. He just got a bit silly. Come on. Let’s put your shoes on. You can do that yourself today. You’ve had a week off, now it’s time to get back to school. It’ll be OK.”

_How many lies can you tell your son?_

“They all hate me, Mommy. They think that ‘Bastian is with me and he is dead, so I’m a ghost.”

“Enough, darling, enough. Let’s not think about any of this, let’s get you to school, everyone will have forgotten.”

But when rode the elevator down, and climbed in the car, and drove the few windy miles down the coast to Eastside, it was apparent everyone had not forgotten; the intensely embarrassed stare Nora got from the school secretary, climbing out of her Mazda, told her this. And when they got to the cheery school door with its pictures of kids on their summer outing, and its bilingual list of Our Playground Rules – _Nos r_ _ègles de jeux_ – the worst possible news was immediately confirmed. They were creating an atmosphere. And it was worse than ever.

“I don’t want to go in, Mama,” said Barry, in a tiny voice, turning his face toward Nora’s stomach.

“Nonsense. You’ll be fine.”

Other children were shoving past them.

“Look, everyone is going to assembly, hurry up.”

“They don’t want me here, Mommy.”

He was so obviously correct: how could Nora lie? The sense of hostility was palpable. Whereas before, the kids here mainly ignored him, now the other children looked fearful. One boy was pointing at him and whispering, two blonde girls from Barry’s class were backing away from Barry, as Nora pushed him toward the corridor, and into a day where he must survive, without her.

Closing her eyes, Nora steadied her emotions, and walked through the cold to the car, trying not to think of Barry, in that school, alone. If he suffered one more day of torment Nora would take him out, and they would give up. But she wanted to try one more time.

She needed to go to Mercury Labs to work, to plan things: so she drove fast and hard, taking the icy curves like a local, not some tourist. In that way, if in no other, she had acclimatized, and slotted right in.

Everything there at Mercury was more malevolent, and sinister, than it first appeared. Sometimes things weren’t remotely as you imagined, sometimes what you thought was reality did not exist at all.

_Mommy, am I invisible now?_

Opening her lab equipment, she sent a brace of urgent _won_ _’t-wait_ emails, then, at her lunch break, she did some research on child protection and parental abuse. It was a depressing trudge: there were so many words she didn’t want to see. Like police. Again. An hour later, she made first contact with her solicitor – preparing for separation and divorce, for dislocation from Daddy.

And then, two hours of actual science-y work later, Nora felt a throbbing in her jeans pocket and she took out her phone. She was swallowing the taste of anxiety.

Six missed calls?

And they were _all_ from Eastside School. In the last twenty minutes. Nora had the phone set to mute; she hadn’t noticed the vibrations as she was so absorbed.

Something sharp broke inside her, and she got a keen sense of dread: she knew that a terrible thing was happening to Barry at Eastside. She had to save him. She made a quick plea to Tracy to cover for her _again_ and she jumped in the car and skidded back down the peninsula.

She was driving so fast, skidding right, pulling up at Eastside Elementary. It was playtime. Nora could hear the chanting.

“Fantôme, fantôme, fantôme, fantôme.” There were dozens of kids in the yard and they were pointing and chanting. But they were shouting at a wall, with a window. _What is happening?_

Nora opened the gate to the playground – which was forbidden at normal hours but this was so far from normal, _so fucking far_ – and now Nora was pushing through all these kids – as they kept shrieking and chanting, and yelling at the window in the white-painted bricks: “Fantôme! Fantôme! Fantôme!”

There was a teacher out here, trying to calm the children, but the kids were panicked, hysterical, out of control, not listening to the teachers. But why were they screaming? What were they screaming at? Nora ran over to the window and peered through the glazing, and there, in some kind of study, or an office, was Barry, cowering in the corner.

He was on his own in this room and he had his hands over his ears, trying to block out the noise of the mobbing children outside. And there were tears running down his face, he was doing that silent eerie sobbing, and Nora was slapping on the window, trying to signal to Barry, _I’m here I’m here, Mommy is here,_ but Barry was not looking and still the kids were screaming “Fantôme! Fantôme!” And then, Nora sensed a hand on her shoulder and she turned and was Kara the school sec, who said, “We’ve been trying to call you, for an hour, we’ve been trying, we-”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know, something in the classroom, it terrified the other children. I’m so sorry, we had to isolate Barry. We put him in the stationery office, to protect him, till you got here.”

“Isolate him? Protect him?!” Nora was outraged. “Protect him from what? Is that what you call protecting him?? Locking him in a room on his own?”

“Mrs Allen-”

“Shutting him in by himself? How fucking frightened do you think he is?”

"But, but but – you don’t understand – the teacher was with him. She must have  stepped out. Everyone is unnerved. We tried to reach your husband as well, but-”

Nora was so angry, she was close to slapping this woman. But she ignored her and she ran into the school, shouting at some young man, _Where is my son? Where is the stationery room?_ and he said nothing. His mouth opened and closed, and then he pointed and Nora followed his gesture. Pushing her way into an empty classroom, Nora tripped over tiny plastic chairs and buckets of papier mâché, and then she was out in another corridor and I see a door that says _Stationery_ and _Papeterie_ and now Nora realized, with a flux of nausea, how much she loathed this French crap.

The door was not locked, it opened when Nora turned the handle and there inside was Barry: crouched in a corner, his hands still over his ears, his brown hair sticking to his face from the dampness of his tears, and then Barry looked up, and saw Nora and he dropped his hands and yelled, with sobbing relief, and terror, with a voice that ripped through Nora like a knife, slicing her with guilt:

“Mommmmmyyyy!”

“What happened, baby, what happened?”

“Mommy, they are all shouting, they chased me, they chased me in here, they put me in here, I was so scared so-”

“It’s all right.” Nora was hugging his smallness to her chest, tight as she could; trying to squeeze the terror out of him, hug the memories away. Smoothing the hair away from his pink face, she kissed, once and twice, and kissed him again, and she said, “I’m taking you out of here, now, right this minute.”

He looked at her: hopeful, yet disbelieving, and entirely desolate.

“Come on.” Nora tugged him gently by the hand.

And they opened the door, and then they retraced Nora’s steps to the school gate. No one stopped them, or even talked to them: everyone was silent, teachers were standing in doorways, watching, blushing, saying nothing.

Nora opened the last glass door to the fresh air, and now they had to run the gauntlet of the kids, locked behind the wire in the playground, by the path that lead to the car park.

But the children weren’t screaming any more. They were silent. All of them. _Observing our departure._

Several rows of silent, wondering faces.

Opening the car door, Nora strapped Barry into the child seat and they drove, in silence, the curving road to Central City. Barry only spoke when they reached Queen Square and they were riding the elevator back up to their apartment. Their home.

“Will I have to go back to school tomorrow?”

“No!” Nora said, almost shouting unnecessarily, “You’re never going back. That’s it. We will find you another school.”

Barry nodded, his face hooded by his coat, then he turned and stared down the hallway as Nora led him along to their door.

What was he thinking? What has he been through? Why were the kids shouting? They went into the kitchen where Nora cooked up tinned tomato soup and buttery bread cut into soldiers. Comforting food.

Barry and her sat in silence at the table in the bare grey apartment with the harlequin painting on the wall. Something about this image chilled Nora more than ever. Because it was coming back.

The harlequin looked at her, pale and inscrutable.

Barry barely ate any soup. He dunked his bread in: ate half a soldier. He left the other half on the table, leaking red soup like blood. And now he just stared at the soup and said, “Can I go to my room?”

And Nora wanted to say yes. Let him sleep. Let him dream this day away. But she had to ask first: “The kids, in the school, what were they shouting? What does it mean?”

Barry looked Nora’s way as if she were stupid. He had learned some French at school; Nora nothing.

“It means ghost,” he said, quietly. “Can I go my room?”

Nora was fighting her fears. She spooned some soup in her mouth and pointed at his soup. “Please eat some more, two more spoonfuls, for Mommy.”

“OK,” he said. “Yes, Mommy.”

Obediently, he ate two spoonfuls of soup then, he dropped the spoon and he ran out of the room and Nora heard him in his bedroom. The iPad clicked and whirred. _Yes. Let him play with that. Let him do what he likes._

For the next hour or two, Nora diverted her thoughts by planning their escape: sitting at the table with papers and laptop. They couldn’t afford to go back to Surrey. Nora didn’t _want_ to go back to London. Maybe she could take Barry and her to stay with her Mum and Dad, just for a few weeks? But Granville was also haunted by memories.

Nora’s mind strayed back to this afternoon. The screaming of the children.

_Fantôme, fantôme, fantôme, fantôme. Ghost Ghost Ghost Ghost._

Why would they shout that?

Nora couldn’t think about it. She couldn’t think about it.

_So what do I do? Plan The Future._

Nora would quite like to stay in Central City, if not in that apartment specifically. Maybe Keystone, she’d grown closer to Clarissa, so perhaps she could rent  a cottage near Keystone, to be near her. Then again, perhaps this was madness. Perhaps it was ridiculous to consider lingering here.

The fact is, Nora had no idea what to do, how to get out of this. What’s worse, she would have to talk to Henry. Does _he_ stay in Queen Square, break the lease, rent it out, or what? Barry and Nora could do with the money. _But are we entitled to that cash?_ Why should he get _anything_ , after what he did?

He should be in prison.

Dropping her pen, Nora rubbed her tired eyes. She needed to lie down. Shutting the notebook, she walked into the bedroom she once shared with Henry. There was a mirror here: the last big mirror in the house. They had hidden all the others because they upset Barry.

Nora stared at her image in the mirror. The afternoon light was wintry and feeble. _She_ look wintry and feeble.

Thin, and maybe even gaunt. She needed to take better care of herself.

She gazed at her reflection. Barry was standing there, in her reflection, Leopardy in his hand. He must have wandered into Nora’s bedroom. He was smiling. He had cheered up. His smile was pert, serene, chirpy.

Nora turned and looked at her son, for real. Standing there in her room. Quiet and alone.

“Hello, you. Feeling better?”

But he had stopped smiling. This was quick. His expression had changed very quickly.

Then Nora realized he was not carrying Leopardy.


	26. Chapter 26

Nora gazed at her son. He looked right back at her, silent and questioning and younger than ever: as if he was going back in time, to when both twins were alive, six years old, five, four, _down down down_. Nora remembered them playing bumps on the beach in Granville, banging their hips together; the memories swirled. She felt frightened and giddy: staring down at the past.

They were both here. They couldn’t both be here.

“Barry.”

“Yes, Mommy?”

“Are you playing a funny game?”

“I don’t understand, Mommy.”

“With Leopardy, darling, with Leopardy, are you playing a silly game?”

Nora swiveled and checked the mirror once more: there they were, mother and son, Nora Allen and her surviving son, Barry Allen. A little boy in a plain maroon sweater, and black denim jeans with matching black shoes.

He carried no Leopardy. Yet he _was_ carrying Leopardy, in the mirror: Nora was sure she saw it. _Didn’t I?_

And he was wearing Sebastian’s perkier, happier smile. It was Sebastian Nora saw reflected. They both loved Leopardy, they would fight over it. Maybe they were fighting now. As they fought in Nora’s womb. As they fought for Nora’s milk.

They were both here in the cold room, with the cold grey sky outside, fighting to see which one of them lived and which one of them died, all over again.

Nora leaned to the bed. She was unsteady.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?”

“Nothing, darling, nothing. Mommy is just a bit tired.”

“You look different.”

 _Why was this bedroom so cold?_ The house, the apartment, was always cold, it always felt like the icy relentless sea had eaten into the bones of the place; but this was a new and different cold: Nora’s breath was misting before her mouth.

“It’s freezing in here,” said Sebastian.

“Yes,” Nora said, and she stood. “Yes, let’s go into the living room and get the fire going properly.”

Nora took his little hand and it was too is cold, like the hand of a corpse; she remembered holding Sebastian’s still-warm hand, desperately searching for his pulse, when she ran down the stairs in Granville to see if he was dead.

Was Sebastian really in this room now? The doubts engulfed her. Nora looked around the room at the white walls, at the crucifix above Henry’s damn dresser, at the windows showing wet, snowy sidewalks and the dark blue Sound; a wind was truly picking up. Central City’s few stunted, coastline trees were bending.

“Come on, Bash.”

Her voice was scratchy. Nora was trying not to show Barry how scared she was: scared of this apartment. Scared of Queen Square. Scared of what was happening to them. And scared of her son.

Barry looked unfussed, and when they retreated to the living room he sat on the sofa, quite calm now, despite the trauma at school.

But as Nora knelt and got the gas fireplace going, she was not calm. The urgent wind was buzzing the windows of Queen Square and all those strange moments began to coalesce.

Nora stared into the fake flames as she turned up the switch. What did she just see then? What happened with Julian Albert, he was screaming something about a mirror?

And the incident today at the school. _Fantôme, fantôme, fantôme_.

G _host, ghost, ghost._

Could they truly be haunted? Nora didn’t believe in ghosts. But it was Sebastian in that mirror. Yet Sebastian was and is identical to Barry. So it was Barry, too; they were the ghosts of each other, Barry was already the living ghost of Sebastian. Nora was living with a ghost as it was; why couldn’t she believe in ghosts?

_Because they do not exist._

Yet it was Sebastian in that mirror. _Come back to say hello. Come back to talk to Mommy._

_You let me jump, Mommy. It was your fault. You let Thawne come and finish the job._

And it _was_ Nora’s fault. Why wasn’t she there? Why wasn’t she looking after her sons? She was the parent in charge. Henry was in Surrey. She should have been there. She should have been there long before: stopping Henry from doing what he did. She should have seen the signs.

_Elevated Levels of Paternal Abuse._

_Why didn’t you stop him, Mommy?_

“It’s not your fault,” said Barry, out loud, and Nora was so startled she dropped the stick of metal used to prompt the fire onto the scruffy rug.

She stared at her son.

“What?”

“The school thing,” Barry said. “That wasn’t your fault. It was Sebastian’s fault. He keeps coming back, doesn’t he? He frightens me.”

“Don’t be silly, Bear.” Nora picked up the pole and installed it back where it belonged; the heat raved and crackled, and it did not touch the cold. If Nora walked four yards from the fire, her breath would be misting again. _This fucking place._

 _“_ Anyway, Barry, we’re going to be leaving soon, so there’s no need to worry about any of that any more.”

“What?”

“We’re moving, darling. Leaving. Moving on.”

“Leaving the city behind?”

“Yes.”

His face twisted into a frown: maybe a panicked sadness.

“But you wanted us to come here, Mommy, and you said it was going to be better than before.”

“I know. But-”

“What about Sebastian? Sebastian is here. And Jett is here, we can’t leave them behind, can we? And what about Daddy-”

“But-”

“I don’t want to go anywhere – ’less Daddy comes too!”

His anxiety was rising again, far too quickly. Everything disturbed him now; he was unapproachably fragile. _What do I say?_

“Oh, we’ll see Daddy, too, sweetie, I promise. We just need to find a new house, we’ll still have roads, and a TV – won’t that be good? The next place will still have a TV and heating and everything.”

Barry said nothing. He stared at the blazing woodfire. Nora could see the faint glow of the flames on his anxious little face, reflected, as the darkness gathered. A raven’s wing swept across the world. The windows were agitated by the wind. This was beyond Central City’s normal brutal breezes. Nora could hear moaning from the wind.

“He’s in here now, isn’t he?” said Barry, very quietly.

“What?”

“Sebastian. Here.”

“What?”

Nora’s blood was tingling cold in her hands.

Barry gazed at her, his expression a strange mixture of passivity and fear. “He is here now, Mommy. Here. In this room. Look!”

Nora stared around the room, feeling something close to terror. Expecting her dead son to emerge from the frigid gloom of the hallway. But there was nothing. Just shadows of the furniture, dancing on the walls, enraged by the roaring flames of the woodfire.

“Nonsense, Barry, we just need to get away. I’m going to make us some-”

A terrible noise interrupts her: she was so frightened, Nora laughed, nervously, when she realized it was the telephone. Just the phone? Nora was so alarmed and nervous, the old-fashioned bell of the phone was freaking her out.

Brought to her senses, Nora gave Barry a hug and a kiss then she ran into the kitchen, eager to hear a human voice, an adult voice, someone from out _there_ , the place of sanity, the normal _city_ where people live, and work, and watch TV; she hoped it was Clarissa, maybe Joe, her folks, she wouldn’t even mind if it was Francine.

It was Henry.

The only person she didn’t want to talk to in the world was the only one who called her. His sombre voice filled her with a yearning and bitter sadness. She could barely stop herself slamming the phone down. And he was talking about the weather.

The fucking _weather?_

"Seriously, Nora, they say it’s going to be, ach, terrible. Big, big storm. Think you should get off of the coast. Like a hurricane, or something. They don’t quite know. It’s going to be a blizzard, tsunamis, possibly. I can come over with Martin’s car.”

“What? And stay with you, Henry? That will be _so. Nice_.”

"Really. Look at the wind, Nora – look, and it’s only just picking up. Just beginning. Remember I told you, these storms can last for days.”

“Yes. I get it.”

“And Central is famous for it. Central City. The centre. The Eye of the Storm.  Remember? Nora? Remember?”

Nora stared out of the window at the wintry darkness, as he talked. This weather he was going on about didn’t quite make sense. A hurricane with snow? Those didn’t exist. She didn’t want to talk or listen to him. The last daylight had fled away to the west, Nora could see the final dim whiteness on the skyline. But the sky was clearing and a full moon was out.

And if anything, the sea appeared calmer than before, the wind had stopped that awful moaning. The only odd thing was those high, fragmented clouds: they were racing across the blue-black sky, silently and very fast.

“Looks fine to me, the wind has dropped. Henry, please stop ringing us, stop bothering us, you know, I, I, you know why-” Nora had to say it, _she had to,_ she was going to say it. “You know what you did. I’ve had enough of the lies. You know what happened. I know what happened. Let’s stop lying, here and now.”

The phone line was dead quiet. As if it had finally failed. Then Henry said: “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You. Henry. You. You and Sebastian.”

“What??”

“You _know_ what you did. I’ve worked it out. Barry told me. About you touching Sebastian. Kissing him. Scaring him. And Dr Snow confirmed it, basically.”

“What? Nora? This is drivel. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You abused him. You were abusing him. Abusing Sebastian. Sexually. Touching him, that’s what you did, you _bastard_ , that’s what you were doing, for months, for years – _how long?_ The way he’d sit on your lap, the way you fucking hugged him – you were touching him, _weren’t you?_ Don’t fucking deny it, that’s why he jumped, he was scared of you, he jumped, didn’t he, _jumped, fucking jumped._ He killed himself, and it was ’cause of you, his own _father_. Did you _rape_ him? How far did it go? And now Barry is screwed up, too, he doesn’t know what to do, you’ve _broken_ us, you’ve _broken_ this family, _you_ did this, _you_ , _and_ _and_ -”

Nora had run out of hatred. The words failed in her mouth. She was trembling as she held the phone. Henry was saying nothing. She was not sure how she expected him to react. With anger? With flaming denial?

His answering voice was quiet: there was anger there, but he was calm.

“This is untrue, Nora, all of it. Entirely untrue.”

“Oh yes? So-”

“I never touched Sebastian. Not like THAT. How could you think this?”

“Barry told me.”

“I was _tactile_ with Sebastian. I gave him hugs. Kisses. That’s all. I tried to cheer him up. Be affectionate. And _why?_ ’Cause you _weren’t_ , that’s why.”

“You scared him.”

“I snapped at him. Once. Nora, this is _crazy_. You are fucking _crazy_.”

“Don’t you _dare_ make this about me, don’t you-”

“Shut up,” he said. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

Like a commanded child, Nora was silenced. He could still somehow do this. Because when he did, Nora felt seven years old again: and her dad was shouting. But Henry was not shouting, he went on, very slowly and precisely:

“If you want the _real_ _truth_ , ask your _son_ what really happened. Ask him to tell you what he told me, six months ago.”

“ _What_?”

“Ask him, if you must. And have a look in the dresser. Did you ever reach the bottom drawer, hmm? No?” His voice spit with anger. “Then batten down the hatches, Nora. This storm is coming. If you want to sit it out on the coastline then – then there’s nothing I can do. Fuck you. But keep our son indoors. Keep him safe.”

He had confused her. But maybe he was trying to confuse Nora. The anger rose again, inside her:

“Don’t come near us, Henry. Don’t come near us, don’t speak to us, just – don’t.”

Nora dropped the phone.

“Mommy?”

It was Barry. He was in the kitchen: Nora didn’t hear him come in. Because she was yelling at Henry.

“Mommy? What’s happening?”

The realization was sickening. How much of that conversation did he witness? Nora just got carried away. She did not think. Did he hear Nora accuse his father of raping Sebastian? _What have I done? Am I making it all worse?_

Nora’s only choice was to pretend she said none of this, and act normal. She could hardly lean down to him and ask him whether he heard her accuse Daddy of rape.

“Nothing’s happening, sweetness. Mommy and Daddy were just talking.”

“No you weren’t, you were shouting.”

What did he hear? Nora forced a smile. Barry was not smiling.

“What’s wrong, Mommy? Why are you shouting at Daddy? Is it because of Sebastian, because he keeps coming back, because he wants him back?”

Nora wanted to say _Yes._

But she controlled herself and she placed a protective arm over Barry’s shoulder, and Nora guided him away from all this: into the living room. The living room felt like the living room in a drama, in a TV play. A stage set. A simulacrum of normality. But the walls were fake and the brightness was unreal and there was a strange darkness beyond, and there were people watching. A silent crowd, watching them, onstage in the lights.

"Shall we have some juice? What do you want?”

Barry gazed, at Nora, then at the fridge. “Dunno.”

“Anything you like, Bear. Anything in the fridge.”

“Um ... Cheese toastie.”

“Good idea! I’ll make some cheese on toast, it won’t take long. Why don’t you go and play, let me know if the fire is doing OK.”

Barry looked at Nora with a hint of suspicion – or wariness – then, to her intense relief, he sloped out.

Now, Nora could pretend that he didn’t hear any of that chat with Henry. She walked back into the kitchen and carefully, she took the bread from the wire basket, then the Cheddar from the fridge. Nora glanced out of the window: the strange grey clouds were racing again: very fast, across the appalled white face of the moon. The trees had begun to bend, once more, as the wind kicks up. Was Henry right about the storm?

She needed to feed her son.

When the toasted cheese was melting and popping, Nora slid it out from under the grill, then served it on a plate, and cut it into special bite-size pieces, and she took it into the dining room, where Barry sat, patiently. At the table. He was wearing blue socks now. He must have put them on just this moment. Leopardy had reappeared and sat on the table next to him: his inert, cuddly-toy smile was aimed directly at Nora.

Barry picked up his little orange plastic-handled kids’ knife and fork and he ate the cheese on toast placidly enough. He had a book by his plate. Usually, Nora didn’t like him reading as he ate, but she was not going to stop him today. He seemed remarkably and strangely contented, considering the terrors he had endured.

Nora looked out of the window. The moon had disappeared behind bigger clouds; the trees were bending much more. Rain, not snow, was hitting the windows. Angry and contemptuous. Barry was eating and reading and humming a little tune: ‘Glad You Came’.

Sebastian’s favourite song. He was humming it here.

_My universe will never be the same, I’m glad you came.._

Nora tried to stay calm. But she had the intense, abrupt and overwhelming sense that this was Sebastian, sitting right here in front of her. Sitting in the semi-dark of the room, with the tall city cowering before an approaching storm, with the lights flicking, desperately, urgently, signalling every nine seconds across the dark waters of the Sound:

_Help, Help, Help._

“Barry,” Nora said.

He did not turn.

“Barry.”

He did not turn. He ate and hummed. Leopardy smiled at Nora: sitting on the table. She had to fight her way back to logic: this was Barry, sitting here. She was letting the stress delude her.

Leaning back, Nora took deep breaths. Calming herself. Regarding her son. Trying to be objective.

Now, she remembered what Henry said:

_Ask him about what really happened, ask him what he told me six months ago._

Something in these words was quite piercing: and her husband’s denial of child abuse was halfway convincing. Nora didn’t believe him, and yet: she did have troubling doubts. _Have I leapt to some terrible false conclusion?_

What to do?

The storm was really picking up. Nora left the table to get her mobile, which lay on back on the kitchen counter.

“Mommy, I’m scared.”

Barry was standing in the kitchen.

“The wind is so noisy, Mommy.”

“Hey, it’s only a storm,” Nora said, giving him a hug. “We’ve just got to sit it out. We’ll be fine. We’ve got food and a fire. It will be like an adventure.”

“Is Daddy coming here to help?”

“Not tonight, darling, but maybe tomorrow. We’ll see.”

Nora was telling lies. It didn’t matter. The mention of Henry brought Nora back to his words: his denial of the abuse. And then that other phrase: _Ask Barry what he told me six months ago._

Nora had to go deeper into this: it was going to hurt Barry, but if she didn’t go deeper, his mother would go crazy, which was worse.

“Let’s go in the living room, sweetie, I want to ask you something.”

Barry looked up at her. Panicked.

“Ask me what?”

Nora lead him into the living room and drew the curtains against the rain and the wind, and the thumps of the wind on glass – it sounded like slates being torn away – and then in front of the fire, as they sat, huddled and cuddled together on the sofa, under a blanket that still smelled faintly of Jett. Nora ask him:

“You know you said Daddy touched and kissed Sebastian?”

His eyes flickered. Embarrassed?

“Yes, Mommy.”

“What did you mean by that?”

“What?”

“When you said it, did you mean-” Nora searched for the words. “Did you mean he touched and kissed him, the way Mommy and Daddy touch and kiss? Do you mean like that?”

He gave Nora all his attention. And his face was shocked. “No. No, Mommy. No! Not like that!”

“So …" The darkness opened wide inside Nora. She might have made an atrocious error. _Again._

“What did you mean, Bear?”

“He was _just_ cuddling him, because you wouldn’t, Mommy. And then he shouted. That scared him. I don’t know why he shouted.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, Mummy. Sure. I’m sure. He didn’t kiss him like Mommy and Daddy. No. No! Not like that! Gross.”

The darkness turned to blackness.

Nora took long breaths, with her eyes closed. Then, she tried again. “OK. One more question, darling. What did you tell Daddy six months ago?”

Barry sat there. Awkward. Stiff. Not quite gazing at Nora. His eyes angry and wet, and frightened.

Nora repeated the question. Nothing.

Just like his mother and his grandmother. Nothing.

But Nora was determined to do this. _I’ve come so far, I must get to the end._ Even if it was causing him obvious distress. Nora’s rationale was that if she did all this on the same day, then maybe it would fade into his memory as just one terrible day, the Day of the Storm.

Nora asked again. Nothing.

She tried once more.

“Did Daddy ever ask anything about Sebastian, or did you ever tell him something about Sebastian, when he asked?”

He shook his head. He was backing away from her: extracting himself from Nora’s embrace, edging up the sofa. The wind shrieked in the trees outside. This was horrific. Nora asked again. She had to know.

“Did you tell Daddy something six months ago?”

No response.

“Barry?”

Silence. Then, he broke open.

“This is what Daddy did, this is what Daddy did, you’re doing what Daddy did: STOP IT!”

_What?_

Nora reached out a hand, to calm her agitated son. “What did you say, darling? What do you mean – this is what Daddy did?”

“Like you, like THIS, what you are doing now.”

“Barry, tell me-”

“I’m _not_ Barry, I’m Sebastian.”

Nora had to ignore this.

“Barry, what did Daddy say, what did you say? Tell me.”

The wind threw everything at the walls and the window. It felt as if the apartment was going to break. Nora thought she imagined it swaying.

“He did _THIS_. He kept asking me _QUESTIONS_ about it, about the _accident_ , so I told him, Mommy, I _told_ him-”

“What, darling?” Nora’s blood was thumping even louder in her ears than the booms of the wind outside.

“Just tell me what you said.”

Barry looked at her, gravely. He seemed suddenly older. A vision of the adult he would become. And now, he said, “I told Daddy I did it, and I did, _I did,_ I did it – I did something _bad_.”

“What? What do you mean? What did you do?”

“I told Daddy I did something bad. And I _DID_. Daddy didn’t do _anything_. But I _never_ told him about you, nothing about _you_ , I told him ’bout me, not you, so he wasn’t angry with _YOU_ -”

“Barry?”

“What??”

“Barry. Tell me. Now. Tell me everything.”

“Tell you everything? But you _know_! You already _know_ everything!” The wind duetted with Nora’s son, screaming and repeating, “Mommy, you know what happened. You _know_ it!’

“No, I don’t.”

“ _Yes you do yes you do._ ”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes you do _YES YOU DO!_ ” Nora’s son was trembling, and shrieking, “It wasn’t just me, it was _never_ just me.” A sudden silence. Barry looked straight at her. And then, he screamed in Nora’s face.

_“MOMMY, HE DIED BECAUSE OF YOU!”_


	27. Chapter 27

Henry sat in Saints and Sinners, nursing a triple of Ardbeg: drinking by himself. The pub was virtually deserted, the only noise came from a few locals, including Mick, finishing up their pints before they all headed home to sit out the storm. Henry had booked a berth upstairs: Saints was pricey in summer, but a bargain in the winter depths.

He would have stayed with Martin and Clarissa again – they were normally very generous – but it didn’t feel right. He was too angered by Nora’s outrageous accusation. He would make his friends uncomfortable.

_Child abuse._

It was insane. The idea – the mere idea of the idea – entirely enraged him. Maybe it was a good thing he was stranded across the Sound, in Keystone, away from  his  family, because if he saw Nora, after all these whiskies, he would probably kill her. Actually kill her. He _would_. He _could_. Just break her neck.

Now he could see his father in himself: kicking the shit out of the little woman. The difference was that he, Henry, was justified.

Child abuse.

_Did you rape Sebastian?_

He swooned with rage, but steadied himself with another slug of whisky. And another. What else could he do? It was all her fault, anyway.

Standing up and walking to the window, Angus gazed drunkenly through the thick glass at Central City, now blurred by rain and dark.

How was his son doing, stuck on in that building on that coast in that storm? Did Nora have the sense to hunker down properly? She wasn’t an idiot. Perhaps she would go to Joe’s. But she was also unstable, and had been so since their son’s death. She’d recovered her senses in recent months but now she was, apparently, right back in the vortex. The whirl of her private insanity.

Child abuse.

Henry wanted to spit the words onto the floor. Bitch. Fucking cunt. _Child abuse?_

What lies was she pumping into his son, right now?

He needed to get over there, and take control, but the weather was too foul for anything but the biggest boat to cross in safety; Mick’s RIB was not built for gales like this. And the highway was closed. And this storm could take several days to clear.

That meant, if he _had_ to get to Central City by boat, he would be obliged to call the authorities and seek official help. He would need the police, the coastguard, the law. But if he brought them into this mess, _everything_ would unravel: he might – he probably would – get arrested for child abuse. And even if he managed to prove the absurdity of that allegation, the police might then ask _questions_ about the murder, and they might discover that the brother pushed the brother, that there was an accomplice, even though Thawne was already put away. However childish.

And then, everything Henry had striven to do – to keep the family together, despite it all – would come flying apart. Their lives would be shattered, for the second time. A whirling nightmare of police, doctors, child psychologists. Nora would crack when her guilt was revealed, when her denial was ripped away.

And yet she might crack anyway: because of his stupid outburst.

He shouldn’t have said what he’d said about the dresser. He’d just been lashing out, in his fury. Not thinking. Yet now, if she remembered this remark, and actually looked in the bottom drawer, she would see the truth and there was no guessing how she might react. Out there. When she was meant to be caring for his little boy.

Perhaps he should have destroyed the contents of the drawer, months ago. Yet he’d always kept it, in reserve. Spare ammunition. Once his son was safely grown up, he’d thought he might show it to him:

See, here, bitch, this is what YOU did. This is what REALLY happened.

Too late.

Henry sat down, defeated, drunk, angry, trembling, on the hard uncomfortable  chair. He was paralysed. He couldn’t do anything until the storm passed, could he? But he was desperate.

"All right there, Henry?”

It was Mick Rory, passing out of the pub.

“Yer family out there in that building?”

Henry nodded. Mick frowned.

"Raw night for them to be alone, out there. In these storms. Mayor was thinkin’ of evacuating. Unsafe.”

“I know.”

Mick shook his head. “And that thunder. Could drive a man to drink!” He glanced at Henry’s whisky glass, and frowned again. “Well now. If you need any help, ye know where to call me, any time.”

“Thanks, Henry.”

Mick sighed, blatantly dismayed by Henry’s attitude, then opened the door to the blasting wail of the storm, and disappeared.

Henry stared out of the window again. The wind was so strong it was ripping small branches off the trees down the way: the car park of Saints and Sinners was a mess of leaves, and twigs, and shrivelled bracken.

What was Nora doing still in that building? What was she doing with his son?

He had to get out there as soon as the highway allowed. It didn’t matter how dangerous it was: _not_ doing anything was worse. He had to get out there and make Nora see sense. Or calm her down. Or maybe silence her.

That, then, was his plan. Cross before dawn, at the next low tide, six a.m. And before then he would drink away the pain, and stifle the anger. Until he needed that anger.


	28. Chapter 28

Nora asked for the third time, maybe the fourth time. This was too much.

“What do you mean, it was me?”

Nora couldn’t disguise the trembling fear in her voice. Barry had now stopped  screaming, stopped crying; but he was looking away from her. Leopardy was lying next to him. He picked him up and hugged him close, as if he were a better friend to him than Nora. Better than his own _mother_.

“Barry, what did I do? What do you mean it was me?”

“Not saying.”

“Come on, please. I won’t be angry.”

“ _Yes_ , you will. Like you were before, in the kitchen at Grandma’s.”

The wind rattled the windows, like a burglar. Testing the building. Finding the weak points.

“Barry. Barry, please.”

"Nothing. No one. Nobody.”

“Bear-ry, please tell me. Please!”

He turned, eyes narrowed. Nora could hear the windows rattling in the gale; the whole building creaking.

“You took the pills, remember, Mommy?”

“Sorry?”

He shook his head. He looked very sad, but he was not crying.

“What do you mean, I took the pills?”

“Everyone said you were sick, Mommy. I was frightened you were going to die like Sebastian.”

“What pills?”

“Special pills. Oh, Mommy, you know? Daddy kept them.”

“He …"

 _Pills?_ Nora was getting the sense of dim memories returning. She did take pills, after the accident. It was that therapist, who emailed her, who recommended the medication. _Yes, I can vaguely remember that._

But why? Was there a special reason?

“Take them again, Mommy. You were better when you took them.”

“I really don’t know what you are talking about, Barry. We just have to sit out the storm.”

Barry looked at Nora, imploring. Very young again: wanting his mother back. “Mommy,  I’m frightened by the storm. Please just take them. I know where Daddy kept them in the bedroom drawer. I saw him put them there for you.”

Henry’s chest of drawers. Nora never looked in all of it, not thoroughly. And he mentioned the bottom drawer in the phone call.

Nora hadn’t confronted this yet. Was there something else in there?

“OK,” Nora said. “It’s getting late now. Do you want to go to sleep?”

“No.”

 “You sure?”

“No.”

“You can sleep in Mommy’s bed, if you want.”

“No!”

Barry was clutching Leopardy tight, as if he feared the wind would rip him from his arms. And why not? Because the moaning of the wind against the windows was like a pack of wolves. They were being stalked by the weather: it was a huge beast on the prowl, battering the windows, seeking prey. This had been going on for six hours, and it could last for three days.

“Want to go to bed with Leopardy.”

_Thank God. Thank God._

_“_ OK. Then let’s do that.”

This was better: Nora could get Barry to bed, then she could look in the chest of drawers. Sort this poisonous mystery once and for all: and then, maybe, they could both sleep through the worst of the storm; maybe they would wake up and the sky would be blue and clear, and Central City will sparkle with snow across the Sound. Nora would have to apologize to Henry. What she said was awful; but he still betrayed her with Francine.

_What is in that chest of drawers?_

It was surprisingly easy to get Barry ready for bed. They ran to his room and Barry dived into his pajamas and he slipped quickly under two duvets, and Nora tucked him in tight and he closed her eyes, with Leopardy clutched in his fists. Nora kiss him. He smelled sweet, in a sad way.

Nostalgic.

The rain thrashed at his window; Nora closed the curtains so Barry could not see reflections of his dead brother. Nora was about to turn off the light when he opened his eyes, and said, “Mommy, am I becoming Sebastian?”

Sitting on the bed, Nora took his hand, and squeezed. “No. You are Barry.”

He stared up at her, green eyes trusting, and hopeful, and desperate. “But, Mommy, I don’t know any more. I think I am Barry, but sometimes Sebastian is inside me and he _wants_ to come out and sometimes Sebastian is in the windows and sometimes he is _just_ here, _out_ here, with us.”

Nora stroked her son’s soft brown hair. She was not going to cry. Let the wind do all the lamenting: it was loud enough for all of them.

“Barry, let’s go to sleep. Tomorrow the storm will be over, I promise, and then everything will be better. Tomorrow we can go somewhere else.”

Barry looked at Nora, as if he did not believe her. But he nodded, and said:

"OK then, Mommy.”

“Goodnight.”

Nora kissed him once more and inhaled his scent so that she could remember it; then Nora shut the light, and closed the door, and she sprinted to her bedroom and grabbed the little key, and opened the bottom drawer of Henry’s dresser. The wind thumped the glass. It sounded as if someone was dragging something along the roof.

Or maybe like a madman trying to get in.

There. Lots of pill bottles.

Tricyclic antidepressants.

They clinked as Nora grabbed them from the drawer and turned them in her hand. They had her name on them: Nora Allen. The latest of the bottles was dated eight months ago. She recognize the bottles. She dimly remembered taking the pills. She had images of herself holding one. Popping a pill. In the kitchen in Surrey.

 _So it’s true: I took antidepressants after Sebastian died?_ And she’d forgotten. This was hardly a revelation.

Her son had died. She was in a terrible state.

But there was a letter here, in the drawer, under the bottles. Nora saw from the letterhead it was from Dr Schwartz. Nora’s own, regular GP. Her doctor was in her fifties, and she was probably the last doctor to write real letters, ever. But this letter was written to Henry? Why was Nora’s doctor writing to her husband?

Nora picked up the letter, and read. The wind slowed to a sad crooning. As if it is was exhausted, for the moment.

The letter was all about Nora. It said she was suffering from Complicated Grief Disorder. It says Nora had a ‘deep abiding guilt’ about the death of her son.

The letter shook, slightly, in her hand. Nora read on.

_Clearly she feels, or felt, responsible for some aspects of the accident, as a result of that night. The guilt is therefore too much to bear, causing this situation-specific memory loss, which may well be permanent. This is rare but not unknown, a distinct form of Transient Global Amnesia. She will recall certain minor fragments, lucidly, and build a false picture therefrom, but the crucial, more personally painful elements will be missing._

_Bereaved parents, especially, are known to suffer this kind of amnesia if they are implicated in the death of a child. And when grief takes a morbid turn, as it has done with your wife, there is no remedy but time. However the pills she has been prescribed will alleviate the worst of her symptoms: the mutism, the insomnia, &c. As I say, if and when she makes a recovery, her memory of the most important events surrounding the accident will, very likely, be completely absent._

_My advice is to treat this as a blessing: you can then move on, start with a clean slate, which is necessary, if you want to rebuild your family, as you have indicated. And you should make no reference to her psychological disturbance, as this may cause regression and deepen her depression. It is very important to restrict all knowledge of this to your immediate family circle, as you are doing now. Suicidality is a concern, if she ever learns the truth, from any source._

The letter went on. It wished Henry and Nora the best of luck. And then it signed off.

A swirl of rain and snow made Nora turn to the window. The darkness was still out there. Trying to get in.

The noise is repeated, as if someone was finger-tapping, very urgently. Then, Nora heard a ghastly shearing sound. Metallic and loud.

Thunder boomed in Central City, the Eye of the Storm. Nora gazed down at all the dinky pill bottles on the floor. There were a few dusty tablets left. She could take one. But she wanted to stay sane and lucid and she wanted to recall the truth, however painful.

And Nora didn’t think she would need help in going to sleep. She was exhausted: she wanted to curl up right now.

With a prayer. _Please please please let the storm blow itself out, overnight._

Nora loaded the bed with blankets, turned off the light, got into bed, and closed her eyes. For half an hour, her mind churned the day, as the wind whipped at the windows. And then, sleep claimed me, sucking her under.

She was woken by Barry.

He was a dim shape in the room. Standing by her bed.

“Scared, Mommy. The wind keeps trying to come into the bedroom.”

Nora was groggy, only barely awake. It was so very dark, Nora had no idea what time. Maybe two a.m., three a.m.?

The wind was busy outside: tearing things up, the mix of rain and snow still gritty on the windows. Nora was so tired.

She reached for the dim form of her son. His warm little hand. Nora couldn’t see his face, so she was not sure if he was crying. His voice was wobbly. Nora yawned widely and said: “Come on then, get into bed with Mommy.”

Barry leapt quickly under the sheets and snuggled up to her and Nora squeezed his shoulders hard, and inhaled the sweet smell of his hair, and they cuddled up, Barry’s head resting on her shoulder.

Her child’s warmth was a serious comfort; Nora fell asleep again, with a feeling close to tranquillity.

And when Nora woke up, it was still dark outside and the wind was still howling, quite undefeated. Unabated.

Contemptuous of her prayers. I feel like screaming _Shut up!_

Shouting like her dad, like Henry.

And then, she realized there was no Barry in her bed.

But there was the shape of Barry in the sheets, and the dent made by his head on the pillow.

_Where has he gone?_

Jumping up, Nora sleeved himself in her dressing gown and grabbing a flashlight- they had lost power- she ran barefoot through the apartment – through the cold dark living room, and down the hall, to the door of Barry’s room. She pushed open the door and shined the flashlight on his bed and there he was: asleep in his bed, his little nightlight twinkling.

Just as Nora left him, hours ago. Clutching Leopardy.

He looked as if he hadn’t moved all night. He _surely_ hadn’t moved all night. If Barry had come to Nora’s room, he would have been obliged to walk through almost total darkness. And he’d never do that.

The fear cut Nora deep inside: dicing her into little pieces of panic. If Barry hadn’t left his bed since Nora tucked him in, who was it that slipped into her bed last night? Who was that boy? _Was I holding Sebastian?_ Was she clutching a ghost? A real, living, warm-blooded ghost?

This was too much. She was the crazy woman who took the pills. She couldn’t bear this any more. Nora looked at the small, boxy clock on Barry’s bedside table. It was not even six a.m. It won’t be light for another two hours.

This had to end. Nora was hovering on the very edge. She walked back, in the torchlight, into the kitchen and passed into the living room, where everything was so cold. Even colder than normal. Why?

Stepping over to the window sill, Nora picked up the phone. It was dead. Of course. Everything was dead. The line had finally given out.

Even if they _wanted_ to take the terrible risk of using the car – in this darkness, and in this weather –they couldn’t. Not now.

Nora checked the hallway. Normal, but dark.

“Hello?” A voice. She jumped.

Nora was met with a man, young, probably in his early twenties. “Oh, you’re awake!” he said.

Nora had nearly screamed and she was trying to calm her beating heart.

"Sorry, I’m Kurt, we live upstairs- my husband just checked the garage. It’s very flooded.”

 _We have no car. We have no phone._ They had no means of communicating with anyone. They were trapped, and silenced.

_Me and Barry._

“Sorry?”

“Yeah, it’s flooded-” A second neighbor, a young guy also in his twenties, with black hair and hazel eyes had just opened the door to the stairwell. “Not even the lobby’s okay. Well, only a few millimeters, but it might rise…Do you have a phone?”

“Sorry, no,” Nora shook her head. “It just died.”

“Shit. Ours too.”

Nora half expected these men, Kurt and Blaine, to invite themselves in to protect from the storm. She half expected them to be afraid and shelter with a close-to-middle-aged-woman, who might be sensible at this time of a crazy storm.

But they said goodbye, wished her luck with the phone, and went back upstairs. Said they were welcome to come up if they wanted, once they learned Nora had a son.

Nora didn’t accept their invitation, and instead, went back inside to try and deal with the fact that they may have just lost their _car_ due to flooding. She _could_ have taken it to Joe’s house, in Surrey, but she hadn’t believed Henry then and she couldn’t believe she hadn’t, now.

She was _alone_ with Barry in Queen Square…

And whoever else was in here.

Nora could hear singing.

" _My universe will never be the same, I’m glad you came..”_

The singing was coming from the living room. Nora was barefoot on the cold floor: but she was shivering from fear, not from cold.

The ghost of her son was singing in the darkness.

_“Can you spend a little time, time is slipping away…”_

He was in the living room. Nora leaned against the window sill to stop herself from collapsing; then she turned and carried her flashlight into the living room and she shined it on the sofa – and there he was: alone in the dark, barefoot in his soft pajamas. It was Barry, Nora thought.

Her son regarded her, blinking in the beam of light. How did he get here? He was white-faced, and he looks exhausted. The rain flailed the windows. It would not stop. Nora walked closer to the sofa.

“Sebastian is here again,” he said. “He’s in my room. I don’t want to see him any more. Mommy, make him go away.”

Nora wanted nothing more than for Sebastian to go away. And maybe Barry, too. She was frightened of both of her sons, the two ghosts in this house, the two ghosts in her head; the Mischief Brothers, melting, one into the other.

"Let’s go into my room and get under the blankets. We can wait for the storm to stop, it will be over soon, it will be light quite soon.”

“OK, Mommy.”

Obediently, he reached out a hand – but Nora picked him up and carried him into the bedroom; where Nora tucked him into the big bed and then she closed the door. Then, she slid the bolt. Whatever was out there, she didn’t want it to come in here.

Then, Nora got into the bed with her little boy and he snuggled up to her and said, “I don’t believe what Barry says, Mommy. He says horrible things.”

Nora was hardly listening to her son. She could hear a voice outside the door. Who was it?

It _must_ be him. Sebastian. Or Barry.

It was indistinct, it sounded like _Mommy Mommy Mommy._

Now something knocked on the door. It wasn’t the wind. This was the bedroom door. Then the voice spoke again.

It was him. Nora was sure. He was outside the door.

Nora was trembling.

She hugged her son close and she shut her eyes, trying to block out everything, now: the wind, the rain, the noises, the _voices_. Everything must end. But this storm would never end, _this night will never end, it will just go on and on, I have no choice._

Nora’s son hugged her under the sheets and then he lifted his face very close to her. She could smell his breath in the darkness, it was sweet, childish, untainted, as if he had been sucking something sugary.

He said, “Sebastian says it was all your fault. You were with that man. That’s why he came back, to hurt you.”

The shards of ice were in Nora: cold and cutting, in her heart.

“What? What man, darling?”

“The man in yellow. In the kitchen. I saw you kissing him. So it was your fault, too. I think Grandma knew too, but then she told me I must never say it to anyone.”

Nora said, “Yes.”

Because she could remember. _All of it._

This was what Nora had, buried in her mind. This was the reason for her denial. This was the memory she _lost_ because the guilt was too intense to bear. _This_ was the self-loathing blurred by drugs.

Henry was going to be very late. Nora’s Mum and Dad were out. So Nora asked a guy over. She’d met him in the bar in Granville a few months before. And Nora asked him over that night: because she wanted to sleep with him. She was bored with sex with Henry. She always wanted more sex than he did.

And she wanted the thrill of the new.

“Mommy?”

“It’s OK, darling, everything is OK. It’s OK.”

Nora had kissed him passionately in the kitchen. That’s why she was distracted. She was drinking wine with a man she _liked_ and wanted to have sex with – so she kissed him long and deep across the table – and that’s when the twins saw her. She was embarrassed and a little drunk; she shouted at them to go away. Then, she fucked the man in the spare bedroom on the first floor.

And the guy’s name was Eobard. She remembered it _all_ , now. A young, handsome guy, blonde, blue-eyed, suave. Younger than Henry: a man like Henry, when they first met.

The memories poured into Nora; the truth rained down. The storm had ripped a hole.

After Nora had sex with Eobard, he didn’t leave, but Nora then fell asleep on the bed from all the wine and the sex and the house was empty, apart from her, him, and the kids. But then, the twins knocked gently on the door of the spare bedroom and again, Nora barked at them, boozily told them to go away again; and she fell asleep once more.

And then, she awoke to hear the scream. The scream that told Nora what she had done.

Nora ran upstairs and there was her son, shrieking. About his brother. And that scream told Nora a truth she could not bear, she had been unfaithful, a second time ̧ and this time, it had killed her little boy.

And that’s why Nora lied, immediately, to everyone – the police, the hospital, Henry, _everyone_ – about the man- Eobard- about the infidelity, about her neglect. She even told them that Eobard murdered her son, invaded their home, trying to distract attention, with a foolish lie, so as to hide her guilt. Because the truth was too much and so her lies became the truth. Even for Nora. _Especially_ for Nora.

But they still knew what Nora had done: her _awful_ crime of infidelity, and shame. Henry knew, her mother knew, her doctor knew. But they kept it quiet from everyone else, even the police, to protect Nora?

_But how did Mum know? How did Henry find out?_

Perhaps her mother saw something, perhaps her son confessed, or maybe that guy- which she pinned on the death of her child:

 _I killed him. She wouldn’t leave Henry._ It didn’t matter. They found out.

It was all Nora’s fault. She did it. She was with another man – again – and because of that, her son died.

And they’d been shielding her from the shattering reality ever since.

“I’m sorry, darling, so sorry, darling.”

“He’s coming back now, Mommy. He’s outside the door.”

“Sebastian?”

“No, Bear. He’s coming back. Listen.”

The wind was shrieking and the rain is hailing but, yes, Nora was sure she could hear her dead son, outside the bedroom.

_Let me in. Let me in. You did it. You must let me in._

Nora was crying, now. Her son held her in bed as she cried and her other son was outside, saying,

_Mommy, I’m back now. Let me in. I’m back now._

Nora kissed her son on her forehead and said, “He jumped, didn’t he?”

Nora’s son stared at her, with those green eyes like his grandmother. Sombrely, tremulously, he said, “No, Mommy. We wanted to climb down, Mommy, from the top balcony. To the other balcony of the other room – the room you were in, Mommy, ’cause we wanted to see why Daddy wasn’t there. We were scared to open the bedroom door, ’cause you shouted at us, but Bear-y still wanted to see, see through the window, if you were with the man who wasn’t Daddy. And – and – and he tried to climb down and then I was climbing down and then he grabbed me, Mommy, he grabbed me because he was falling and he pulled so hard he was pulling me too; so” – Nora’s son’s eyes were now full of tears, big fearful tears – “that’s when I pushed him away, Mommy! And then he fell all the way, it was my fault. You always liked him more and I pushed him off me ’cause I was falling too.”

The tears rolled down his face as he spoke.

“So he fell, Mommy, he fell. And I did it, I pushed him ’cause he was pulling me too.”

Nora was silenced. Her guilt was perfected. There was nothing left to know.

Her dead son was outside. Guiltless and accusing. She needed to say a final sorry, the only way she could. So this was it. The timing was immaculate. Nora was getting out of the bed, jumping into clothes. Barry stared at her in the half-light. Tears drying on his cheek. Nora crouched by the bed, and stroked the sweet brown hair from her son’s troubled face. “Darling,” she said. “Don’t feel guilty. It was all my fault.”

“But it’s not all right, Mommy? Is it?”

“No. It is. I am so sorry. It truly wasn’t your fault, darling. You were just playing. It was all me, all my fault, everything. Everything has been my fault, all the time.        Because of what I did, that night, you’ve been confused – _so_ confused, for _so_ long.  Because of me.” Nora breathed deep and kiss his forehead. “And that’s why we’re going to get away, from here, right now.”

“In the dark? It’s too dark, Mommy.”

“That’s OK, sweetie, I have a light.”

“But the wind? And the dark an’ everything?”

“It’s all right. You can come with me. It’s low tide at six. We can cross now in the dark. It won’t take so long.”

Barry looked at Nora from the bed. He frowned again, deeply puzzled. He rubbed the last tears from his eyes with his fist. And Nora knew that if he started crying again she wouldn’t be able to do this terrible thing. So she needed to be quick.

“Remember I always loved you. Always. Both of you.”

Barry was silent for a moment and then he said, “I’m sorry I fell, Mommy. I’m sorry I tried to climb down to see you. I’m sorry I pulled at Sebastian ...”

“What?”

“I’m sorry I fell, Mommy. I’m sorry I died.”

Nora kissed him one more time. “It doesn’t matter, Bear, it was all my doing. Not anyone else’s. But I still love you.” Nora reached over. “And now it’s time for us to go, to go and find your brother, so we can all be together.”

He nodded slowly, and quietly. Then, they stood, hand in hand, and they turned and walked to the door. They unbolted it, and twisted the handle. His overclothes were in the living room: Nora slip his feet inside his boots, and sleeved his arms in his black anorak, and she zipped him up, tight. Then, Nora put her own coat on, and her wellingtons.

They walked through the gloom and wet of the dining room, and the murk of the kitchen. One of the windows had snapped, breaking, and the wind was howling, the rain dripping from all directions. The whole place was crumbling in the storm, the building swaying. The skyscraper would fall. It was time for them to leave.

Tightly clutching hands, Barry and Nora pulled open the door, and stepped into the emergency stairwell; straight into the dark.

They got to the lobby, trudging through just a half an inch of water to reach the main door.

Everything out there was cold as ice.


	29. Chapter 29

Henry zipped his raincoat, and buttoned it, too. Then he realized that he was going to need many more levels of clothing than this, to fight the wind and rain, to cross the bridge at six a.m. in the dark.

He was so drunk, his judgement was failing him. He undid his coat, and sat back down on the bed, listening to the wailing of the wind outside Saints and Sinners. It resembled the hooting of a bunch of kids, trying to sound like ghosts. 

The sound was quite convincing.

One more drink.

He reached for the bottle, nearly knocked it over, and poured himself a final glass of Ardbeg. The peaty, spicy whisky burned down his throat and he grimaced as he stood up, once more. 

Another zip-up top, another jumper. Then his raincoat, again.

Now he grabbed for his boots, slightly swaying, and laced them tight. They were good, waterproof hiking boots, but they would not keep out the cold, seeping waters of the Sound. Especially with this freak hurricane: he was going to get horribly wet. But that was tolerable, as long as he made it out there, under cover of dark. 

Where he would do what he had to do. To save his son.

Henry was the only person around as he pushed open the front door of the pub – against the resisting storm, out into the blackness; Saints and Sinners was silenced by the booming of the wind.

Lights on a wire swung, crazily, in the gale. Central City lights blinked through the murk.

Henry began the walk, down the pier, along the shingle and mud toward the one bridge he’d be able to walk over. The cold dripped down his neck; the mist and rain grew denser as he trudged out onto the gaping, endless flat bridge.

Was he going the right way? The torch was heavy in his numb hands. He should have worn the head torch, as well. This was a stupid, foolish error. He was very drunk, and making elementary mistakes.

And basic errors would be bad.

He looked left, and saw black shapes. In the dark. Black on grey. These were surely boats. But then the wind howled, in the firs, and it sounded like Jett, still alive, still lost in the sea. 

“Jett?” He couldn’t help himself. He loved that dog. “Jett? Jett!”

He was shouting into the void. He was now ankle-deep in water. And he was lost, and drunk, and in trouble. He had made it across the bridge but the shore was a mess.

Henry lifted his boot from the ground and hiked on, desperate now, flinching against the bitterness of the wind, and the rain. No. He was lost. The lights were invisible. Had he gone the wrong way round the bay? Was he heading into the same place where he nearly drowned, trying to save Jett?

There.

A figure? He was sure he could see a figure. Maybe two figures, an adult and a child. Both of them were hunched against the ferocious wind. But why would an adult and a child be out here, walking on the pier, in the storm, in the pre-dawn darkness?

It could only be Nora and Sebastian. And now he could hear his son, calling him. He knew that voice so well.

_Dada Dada Dada._ Carried on the wind. _Dada._  

He was calling him, pleading for him. But could he see him? 

He could make out the cold dark waters, flooding the pier. Henry was on a slope, a lighter grey in the general black. Sebastian and Nora must be on Pier 52, he just had to reach them and get them all back to the mainland. 

“Jumping Jack, I’m coming. Hold on!”

_Dada._

Henry pulled up short. Gazing into the chains of rain. The figures had completely disappeared. The mist was whirling in places, like flaws in ice. Perhaps he had imagined it? Perhaps there was no one crossing here. It certainly didn’t make sense that they would be out here. Why would Nora and Sebastian leave the apartment to step into this horrific storm? A pointless risk.

And the noise? The voice?

Perhaps it was just the wind. All he could hear was howling. Yes, it might be dogs or children, but it might just be the wind. He was deceived by his fear and desperation.

Leaning low to the gale, Henry trudged on. Slipping left, he pushed a hand into thick mud. Like wet cement. Leaving his mark. And now his right foot plunged into a depth of water: sudden, and sharp, and icy.

Henry cringed, and lifted his heavy, soaking boot from the seawater. Was more flood coming in already? No. That didn’t add up. But how long had he been out here? His sense of time was slipping; he was tired and still drunk, and deafened by the disorienting gales. The rain and mist were so intense, there was no light anymore, anywhere.

Or maybe that was it over there: a dull pale throbbing in the grey; like something ominous underwater, like something bad on an X-ray.

For a second the fog split open.

There. That was definitely a building. And it was not so far away. He was almost there.

But again he could see a smear of movement, just one figure, rather small, moving in the greyness. Yet the smear of darkness was moving strangely. Left, and then right. Darting. And fast. Not like a child. More like a dog? Was it Jett? Then the movement stopped. And it was gone.

He clambered, painfully, to the top of the rock, where the mist was even thicker.

Whatever it was, it had gone. But now he was truly close: he was running up the sloped street, he had made it to the door.

_Up, up, up._  

There. He was in the lobby. Pitch dark. He groped his way to the stairwell, knowing the elevators wouldn’t work because the lights were off. The water was rising.

Henry crouched against the wet and sprinted up the stairs. The apartment door was open, flapping hysterically in the brutal wind. Inside?

Why had Nora left the door open? In this storm?

He stepped over the threshold, into the kitchen. The floor was wet, there was water everywhere. His torch showed why: a huge broken window in the dining-room, floor to ceiling.

“Sebastian?”

He was shouting against the wind that boomed outside.

“Sebastian! Nora! Barry! It’s me!”

Nothing. No one answered. The house was empty. They had gone? Did that explain the two figures he’d maybe seen on the mudflats? Had he just seen his wife and son?

“Barry!” He tried one last time. “Nora!”

Again, nothing. What about the bedroom? That would maybe be safe. Running through the dining room, he kicked open the bedroom door, and stared, from bed to chair, and from wall to wall.

The room was empty. A torch was on, flipped on and lain on the table. The bedding was disturbed. But whoever had been here had recently left.

The place was empty. He’d lost them. They might both die outside, in the storm.

Then he heard the voice. Coming from the far end of the apartment.

“I’m still here. I’m still in here!”


	30. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. It has been one wild ride. This is the final chapter, thank you so much for reading this. I'll have a note at the bottom to explain everything in more detail, but I think the epilogue should cover it all.

**_About Seventeen Years Later_ **

It was the first fine day of proper spring. Like it should be. The spring has been so wet; endless days of drizzle, and grey. But now the air sparkles, and the lights of Central City shine bright across the Sound at night. It had cleared up from that morning in Mountain View Cemetery.

As they drove to Queen Square, Henry looked to the building. Just as Clarissa told him, it had all of those repairs done over all these years, but remains that same building they once called home. 

The new car stops gently on the interior drive, in the parking garage. A Cadillac Escalade. Henry offers a hand, but Sebastian says, “No, I can do it by myself now.” Teasingly, because his son is not eight, nor nine, nor ten. He’s all grown up, now.

He climbs out of the car. Together Henry and his son walk up the heathery, paved circle drive, into the lobby, and up the working elevator.

A breeze greets them. Like the building was exhaling. Like it has been waiting for them, holding its breath.

But this is Henry’s delusion. The breeze comes from that open window pane, they’re so high up: it forms a wind tunnel. The thin place is thinner than ever; emptiness reclaiming it.

“It’s cold in here,” says Sebastian.

He’s right. The day is warm but Queen Square is still unwarmable.

Together, they edge into the dining room. Most of this building work, so far, has been done to the exterior; the interior is much as it was that night, except with new furniture, different hardwoods to replace the waterlogged ones of the past. But everything felt empty, and everything felt cold. 

Sebastian gazes around.

“Look at the mess!”

This is their official last visit, since the storm. Henry is putting the traumas of the past behind them; but coming to the old apartment roils these thoughts, again. Queen Square unnerves him, now. Henry cannot tolerate being here more than an hour.

Because the memories of that night, and the final hike through those evil gales, will never fade.

“What are we waiting for?”

Sebastian is impatient. Henry smiles, to disguise his anxiety.

“Nothing, slugger, nothing at all. You go and find anything left behind, this is probably our last visit.”

And he walked in a slow goose-step down the hall.

Now, Henry pushes the door into the living room. Trying to fend off the grief and the fear, trying to be a responsible parent. A single parent. As that is now his job. 

They are selling the apartment. After seventeen years, Henry couldn’t have done it. But now, he felt like it was okay.

Sebastian had gone to college for pre-law, graduated that, and now, he was off to Harvard University Law School in the fall. His essay was, well, a careful telling of his early life, a retelling that _everyone_ had read. Everyone. Clarissa, Martin, Henry, Joe, Ronnie, Caitlin, their old neighbors, scientists and billionaires, Harrison Wells and Oliver Queen, Laurel Lance. Iris, Wally and Francine, before Francine passed and it was discovered she had a second child, a son: Wally. Lyla Michaels, Sebastian’s old schoolteacher. Kara Danvers, the elementary school sec. Leonard Snart and Mick Rory, boaters that saved his dad’s life when he was a child. They all had read it. Every word. And Henry couldn’t be more proud.

In the earliest years, Queen Square had been remodeled and repaired by its original developers, Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance. The building did not fall like it felt it would that night, but there had been severe damage because of Hurricane Clyde. That hurricane was one of the only Pacific hurricanes to actually do damage to Central City, and frankly, most residents didn’t really know that they could occur. A lot of coastal buildings couldn’t withstand the storm.

Henry hadn’t sold the apartment in those seventeen years, however. Not once. He would have thought handing the keys back to the city would financially decimate them. And he brought himself and Sebastian to live with Joe and Iris, following the storm. 

And then seven years later, short on cash, Henry turned the Queen Square property into an AirBnB. They had those upstairs neighbors to come in on it, too, and there were two units that Kurt would maintain so that Henry would never have to come back. 

But now, Henry hopes to sell it for two million, at least, and invest some of it into the rest of Sebastian’s college education.

But regardless, Sebastian and Henry will be financially secure. Any real monetary anxiety will be gone. All monetary anxiety.

The building whispers, as the wind flutes through the hole in the roof. Quickly Henry passes into the main bedroom – with the old king size bed. He glances at the mirror. It’s still here for a very good reason: Henry doesn’t want it. The mirror represents too many unsettling memories of those tragic weeks. 

How many false reflections did they all see, that months they lived in this apartment? The abuse, the murder, it was all lies, reflected back and forth; or maybe it was the transparency that confused them: they saw one child through the other: but flawed, and distorted, like seeing things through ice.

Poor Barry fell. Henry’s son fell because he climbed down from the top-floor balcony; because he wanted to see his mother. Sebastian pushed him off, to save himself, but it wasn’t murder.

Henry suppresses the shudders of guilt, and regret.

The bedroom here in Queen Square is even colder than the dining room. When Henry reaches the hall, Sebastian comes along. He’s in skinny jeans and a green sweater. He didn’t wear much red or blue, anymore, except for a brief stint at a private high school in Ohio. The uniform was a blue blazer, with red piping. Sebastian was still himself, but Barry’s color could never really go away.

“Have you got everything you want?” 

They had left a lot of Barry and Sebastian’s old stuff in a trunk beside the bed in the second bedroom. If a family with kids came to stay in Central City, they could have things to play with. 

Sebastian says,

“There was only one toy left. Under the bed.”

“What was it?”

“Iron Man.” 

That damn superhero.

“Not sure I want it anyway.”

He takes the action toy from his pocket; Henry puts it in his pocket; Henry has an urge to throw it away, like something poisonous. 

Besides, he is grown out of little toys: Sebastian is twenty-five years old. He was going to law school in the fall, real, proper law school. They are settled in a good, solid house in Surrey; and Sebastian has his bachelor’s degree.

And, strangely enough, he now has friends he can call up on: kids who knew him at Eastside Elementary, Carlisle Junior High. Central City High School. Dalton Academy. University of Central City. He is popular. The boy with the story. Sebastian was always that bit more buoyant than Barry.

“I found something of Jett’s, too.” 

“You did?” 

Sebastian looks in his pockets again, and takes out tiny plastic bone. One of Jett’s old toys.

 “Thank you,” Henry says, taking the toy. This he felt he could keep.

Jett is waiting for us at the pub, being indulged by Mick Rory, Snart, and the locals. His survival is a miracle. The day after the storm, he re-emerged across the Sound, loping up the pier by Saints and Sinners, muddy, freezing, shivering; like a sodden ghost of a hound. But he is not unmarked. He never goes to the beach, he whimpers whenever Sebastian tries to bring him on a boat, or offers to walk him across a bridge.

Now, Jett is old, nearly blind, and grey. He has survived all these years, reaching the ripe age of twenty. Bichons are really only supposed to live up to eighteen years, but Jett is remarkable. Henry and Sebastian are both terrified for the day he finally passes. 

Jett’s toy is in Henry’s jacket pocket. Together, Sebastian and Henry walk out of the apartment, closing the door. It strikes me that one day soon, Henry will close this same door for good – when they sell the unit.

He was satisfied with this. 

Henry will always revere Central City, he will always gaze in admiration at its daunting beauty from the seats outside the Sound at Saints and Sinners. But he is content to keep it at a distance. Central City has defeated them, with its winds and tragedy. 

Henry held Sebastian’s hand, very tight, as they walked down to the beach. As if the apartment may try to stop him going.

“OK then, Jumping Jack. Let’s get home.”

“Don’t call me that.”

They walked back into the circle drive after spending a few minutes staring at the entrance to Pier 52. They climbed into the car. Henry starts the engine.

Sebastian is sitting in the passenger seat, he’s humming his new favourite tune. A pop song, Henry thinks. He sighs with barely concealed relief as they steer away from Central City. Silence absorbs them. Then, they get out at the parking lot of Saints and Sinners, where they could see the city in full view from Keystone. A grey seal rises a few yards upstream. 

Henry’s son looks at the seal, and he smiles, and it is very definitely Sebastian’s smile: pert, mischievous, alive. He is definitely getting better. Therapy has helped him recover. After all of this time, he no longer feels that Barry’s fall was his fault, that if he hadn’t fallen, Thawne would have never stood in front of Sebastian, standing Barry up and stabbing him with no mercy. Stabbed him as Sebastian, seven, watched in horror from the balcony. They’ve convinced him of that. But that still leaves Henry’s appalling error. Henry blurred his identity; he made that mistake. One day he will have to forgive myself.

 The seal has disappeared. Sebastian turns away. And now his face clouds with some further, darker emotion.

“What is it, slugger?”

Sebastian stares beyond Henry, at Central City. 

Slowly, he says:

“Barry came back, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he did. Just for a bit.”

“But he’s gone now, and I’m Sebastian again. Aren’t I?”

“Yes,” Henry says, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder. “That’s who you are. And who you always were.”

Sebastian is quiet. A boat has churned the clear water. The waves come in, violent, and he waits. Then he says:

“I miss Mom. And Barry.”

“I know,” Henry says. “So do I, son.”

And it’s true. Henry does. He misses them every day. But they have what they have, and they have each other.

And they both still have little secrets, that might never be revealed. Sebastian’s secret is the night of the storm, he has never told Henry exactly what happened, and what was said in the house, that last night; Henry has long stopped asking, for fear of upsetting him. Why go back? Why dig it all up?

Equally, Henry has never told Sebastian the entire truth about his mother.

When Henry found Sebastian, huddled in the last bedroom to not have the windows broken, he apparently had no idea where his mother was. So Henry searched the apartment, looking for clues. And finally, as morning paled the mainland skies, Martin, Ronnie, and Len came over in Mick Rory’s skiff, and rescued them from the destroyed shore: ferrying the father and son back to warmth and safety at Joe’s house.

And then they heard about Nora, before the search parties had properly started.

Her body was spotted by a fisherman, floating by a beach down south. Immediately after that, the police, emergency responders, and Red Cross took over Central City. Henry left them to it, shielding himself and Sebastian from the journalists and the detectives. They hid themselves in Joe’s house, staring at the shivering trees beyond the big windows.

Within a week the police reached their conclusion: Nora had quit the apartment building, for whatever reason– perhaps in some strange attempt to get help; but she had fallen in the flood and the darkness, and drowned. There had been warnings from all city officials to evacuate, seeing the storm on the radar, but she had ignored it and had kept her and her son there, in danger. Neighbors had stayed, too, disbelieving the freak hurricane in winter. And some of them died, too. It was so easily done. Too easily done. It was an accident. 

But was it, truly? Henry is haunted by that phrase he heard at the S.T.A.R. Labs dinner: _All love is a form of suicide._

Maybe Nora wanted to join her dead son. Or maybe she was deranged with guilt, by what she read in the bottom drawer of the dresser. Henry found the letter from her doctor, scattered on the floor of the bedroom, that same night he found Sebastian. He destroyed it.

The questions will plague him, always: would she really leave her son behind in Queen Square?

Did Henry really see one or two figures, through the mist, as he made his own way to Central City?

There will never be an answer. Though there were clues, and these are the clues Henry will not reveal to Sebastian. Not as long as he lives.

When they found Nora’s solitary body, floating in the tide, they found her holding Barry’s black coat, by the sleeve.

And when the forensic scientists conducted the post mortem, they discovered sad, short wet strands of fine brown hair, clutched in Nora’s fingers, as if she had been grasping desperately at someone in those final minutes: trying to save her child from drowning.

Sebastian is looking south, to Coast City; Henry has his back to Central City.

It is a fine, calm day in mid-March; the skies are mirrored in the silent sea lochs. And yet a cold wind still whips around those beautiful buildings. Like ghosts moving so fast, no one could see them.

“Happy birthday, son.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is it. Thank you again for reading! A few things that I don't want to get lost in translation- I know the ending was a little confusing, especially chapters 28, 29, and 30. Although I guess it was supposed to be: Nora was not mentally stable, and Sebastian was seeing things wonky because he was just a kid. 
> 
> What actually happened was this: 
> 
> Barry and Sebastian were seven years old when they noticed Nora with another man, a dangerous man. This was the Eobard Thawne who is really similar to canon. Eobard Thawne on Earth-14 is slightly different and more similar, in ways. He still wants to kill Barry, because as the Reverse Flash he still has this crazy agenda against him. But he can't kill Barry, or else he will never become the Reverse Flash. 
> 
> But Eobard has a problem. The first is Sebastian, who is identical to Barry, and how will he know? He would probably have to kill either Nora and Sebastian or both, which Eobard would probably be fine with, because killing Sebastian would mean a lot more to Barry, rather than killing his mom. 
> 
> The second problem Eobard has is that while he was pretty much stalking Barry and Sebastian, trying to figure out which one was which, he ran into Nora, who wanted to know why he was watching her kids. Creepy, right? Yes. But Eobard wormed his way out of that one, and because Nora and Henry's relationship on Earth-14 is more rocky (convenient, right? yes), he was able to get into Nora's parents' home on Granville Island and have a little fun with Nora. I might actually write a prequel for this, because this is interesting. Nora and Eobard had an excursion while Sebastian and Barry tried to figure out what was going on, and who was this man who was not Henry?
> 
> And that's when they tried to climb up the balconies to see Nora and Eobard in the uppermost bedroom. What was mentioned in the epilogue was true, Barry did fall, and it was because Sebastian had to keep holding on. That's what created the complex inside Sebastian that it was his fault Barry died. 
> 
> And by that point, Eobard was still on the property, but Nora was sleeping in the bedroom. Sebastian and Barry had been switching identities that entire summer (mentioned in the fic), so Eobard was confused as to who to kill. But he saw an opportunity as Nora was asleep, for he was (slightly, creepily, weirdly, I'm sorry) falling in love. Or at least he had a strange attraction to her. But he grabbed the dying twin who was still on the ground, and Sebastian had not yet shouted. Eobard stabbed Barry, and that was when Sebastian recovered from the shock enough to scream. "Bear-ry has fallen!"
> 
> And then it was too late for Eobard. He lost his speed for good, because without the Flash, he would never become a speedster or become the Reverse Flash. Because he killed Barry, he was stuck years in the past, and, being human again, he was arrested for murder. The police could actually hold him because he had no way to escape.
> 
> And Eobard is still technically in prison, even today, when Sebastian is twenty-five. Perhaps a sequel or something? I don't know. You can decide. But once again, I thank you for reading.


End file.
